The Time Traveller
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: AU. Sarah Potter, having grown up in an orphanage, is attending Hogwarts, and keeping as far away from Dumbledore as possible. Just wanting to be left alone by Dumbledore and Voldemort is next to impossible, even with the time travel technology she's created thanks to a scientist's house near the d now there's a prophecy, saying she's going to die…..FEMHARRY.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer - I don't own Doctor Who or Harry Potter.**

**The Time Traveller.**

**Sarah's escape from the Tournament.**

_Before the year started..._

Sarah nursed her head after a long hangover with a groan. Ever since she'd hit her teens, she'd been doing exactly what teenage girls liked to do; getting drunk and going to parties, typical normal things teenagers liked to do. Trouble was it left you with a terrible headache first thing in the morning.

But last night she'd been celebrating. Not for her birthday, that wouldn't be for another two weeks, and Sarah had no intention of suffering through another hangover until then. No, she'd been celebrating the creation of her time and - something.

"Oooh," she grimaced, rubbing her head though it didn't ease the feeling her brain was larger than her skull. "I'm never going to mix vodka and rum together ever again." A few moments later she chuckled, knowing she would try risky combinations later. Her old friends from the orphanage had grown daring.

The distant thought of her old friends, even through Sarah's alcohol addled brain, made her smile sadly. Ever since she'd gotten emancipated in the magical world, she hadn't really spent time with them. The alcohol acted like a time machine, and she remembered all those years she'd spent at the orphanage, a little girl with a hair ribbon tied into a bow though these days she preferred head bands and pony tails, reading a book, helping the bigger kids with their homework, but she also remembered going out with them.

They'd taught her some stuff, things she wouldn't have learnt until she was much older. They'd taught her how to defend herself from...well anything, really.

Sarah came out of her musings with the realization she could barely move in her rather large bed, her arms and legs felt as though they were made of lead, and even the hand that she'd used to massage her head had gone to sleep. Still she knew she couldn't lie in bed all day. Gritting her teeth Sarah ignored the leaden feeling throughout her body, and got up. It took her two minutes to relearn how to walk properly, but by the time she'd left the shower she'd graduated from stumbling to walking slowly. Any faster and her head would feel like a hydraulic press was squeezing it.

After a nice breakfast, Sarah checked her messages.

"Sarah, it's Tom. Just wanted to know if you wanna go out with me sometime? Anyway, if you do then give me a ring." Sarah smiled at that. Tom Peters was a nice kid from the orphanage. They'd grown up together, but back then the boy hadn't really paid any attention to anything else except his perpetual Action Man games. He'd grown up since then fortunately with age and life, but really he wasn't Sarah's type. It was clear he just wanted to get laid, and whilst Sarah wanted the same thing since it would make her feel like a normal teenager rather than a celebrity in a world she couldn't take any of her friends into it she wasn't sure if she wanted her first night to be with Tom. Sure, he was cute, but did she really want to be with him.

She kept still, idly rubbing her head as the answer machine played out. A few of the messages in her quasi-muggle home went on about new products, crap like that, but not all of them.

"Sarah, how are you feeling? I'm sorry we dared you to drink vodka mixed with...whatever it was, but Lizzie said you were seeing stars." Sarah snickered at the motherly tone in Sophia's voice, "Anyway, I was wondering, though I doubt you'd want to after last night, if you wanna come out with us in a couple of days. We're going to the cinema with some of the guys. Dunno what we're going to see, but hey its still time with us. We miss you badly since you started attending that school for the gifted, though I dunno how that massive bloke managed to fit through the door. Still don't like him now I come to think about him."

Sarah knew what Sophia was talking about. She wasn't crazy about Hagrid either. "Anyway, you're probably nursing a killer of a hangover now, so I'll see ya later. Oh, P.S, make sure you eat right, you look anorexic, girl."

Stifling a chuckle at Sophia's motherly nature, Sarah went back to the living room - where she sighed at the sight of the tropical bird waiting there with a letter clasped in its talons. She went over to the window and opened it, and the bird leapt up onto her held out forearm where she took the letter before it flew out again to rest on the safety rail on her balcony.

The letter was from her godfather. Ever since she'd rescued Sirius Black with the dubious help of Hermione Granger and the time turner, Sarah had received a dozen letters delivered with tropical birds. Ornithology wasn't Sarah's strong suit, but she did recognize the parrots when she saw them.

Sarah opened the letter and read it carefully. There wasn't anything new in the letter; Sirius was still on the run and the promises he made to her made her wonder if the man really believed it.

She'd never had a godfather before, so she wasn't sure what to expect.

Sarah Potter had always been different though outwardly she appeared so normal to the people who met her, but she wasn't normal. Sarah was an orphan, both her parents had died in mysterious circumstances. The staff at the orphanage who'd raised her since she'd been found on their doorstep with a truly hateful note giving them the basic details of who she was, and when she'd been born, but nothing else about the little girls parents so they couldn't answer the inevitable questions the child asked when she was old enough to talk about where her real parents were.

The note was so hateful in its content that it said the girl could die for all they cared, so by the time Sarah was 11 and old enough to understand the staff told her about the hateful content, something they'd kept from her for so long. Worse, they had no idea who the people who'd dumped the baby girl on their doorstep as though she were a milk bottle had even gotten hold of her; it definitely could not have been the parents, so whoever had dumped the baby had probably been saddled with Sarah.

The staff didn't like that theory one little bit because it sounded as though some well meaning person had forgotten the common courtesy of informing the persons involved, and simply gotten along with it. The Police had been informed of course, the staff had preserved the letter, but of course they hadn't found anything. How could they? The baby had been dropped in the middle of the night or in the early mornings, and despite the demand in the newspapers for information, nothing concrete came along.

Just like nothing had come from the investigation into Sarah's past to find out where her parents were and who her family was; the fact she'd been dropped on a doorstep only to end up on another with such a deeply hateful note meant she must have been given to a family with close enough ties to her parents, but the police found it impossible to grasp that someone could be so stupid to just casually come and drop a baby on a doorstep without bothering to check what that family was like. The police didn't even know the family, but they'd already gathered and grasped enough to truly despise them for abandoning an innocent child, and they were worried about the use of the word freak on the note.

So Sarah had to remain in the orphanage. There was no where else for her to go.

To the staff it was inconceivable that anyone could hate Sarah; everyone loved her, she always tried hard to be kind and giving. She would always hug someone if they needed it, and she had a ready smile for anyone, but if you looked closely you could see the sadness in her eyes, almost as though she knew about the notes contents, but she didn't. At least they thought so.

Everyone in the orphanage agreed that Sarah was smart. By the time the girl reached her third birthday, she'd learnt how to take care of herself. She could wash herself, change the bedding in her room, and when she'd learnt the basics of reading and grammar and maths, her knowledge shot through the roof. People started seeing her, a three year old girl, sitting quietly, reading books when kids her age could barely tell the differences between a fish or a cat, tell a dog from a rabbit, or a tree from a house. That was how smart she was.

The orphanage had a library built on age, so by the time Sarah had reached 3 and 2 quarters, she'd finished half of the library, and had successfully moved onto the teenage books. The books built up her imagination, allowing her to paint and draw the various scenes that she'd let play in her mind, and when she read books on science and maths, her comprehension and intellect rose. Sarah was gifted with a photographic memory, and even though she learned a great deal from each book she read, she never used her intellect to make herself noticed.

When she first attended school, book in hand though she'd quickly had to hide it from sight when she saw a bully attack another kid, who was slightly older than her, getting beaten up and called a bookworm, before his pals dumped a load of homework on the poor kids head and was told to do it all for them all. The kid had meekly nodded, and took it all.

That moment was a wake up call for Sarah; if you're smart, don't draw any attention to yourself otherwise you'll get targeted. The teachers may be adults but they can't be everywhere at once. Sarah was realistic enough to see that, and that would be a future point of contention between her and Hermione Granger. The last point was something Sarah had noticed very quickly, there hadn't been an adult patrolling nearby when the attack had happened. How could they not patrol when anything could happen to any of the students? It was ridiculous.

When she would meet Hermione Granger, a girl nearly as bright as her, but more arrogant in her ability to absorb knowledge like a sponge but would find it useless because she wouldn't learn from it, Sarah would see the girl as a version of herself who might not have realised that little life lesson; teachers were not gods, people don't like being shown up. Hermione saw it, but she never learnt it.

Sarah kept her head down in class, doing her best to go unnoticed through her school years, trying desperately to keep her level of work at average. The other kids from the orphanage who loved her like a little sister, had asked her why she wasn't working so hard, and she reminded them of the kid who'd been bullied. They grasped the fact quickly, and they said nothing about it. They never pressured her again, for which Sarah was eternally grateful for, and she agreed in return to help them with their homework when they needed it, but only help. She wasn't going to do all of it for them. But she had no idea the kids were keeping an eye on the other kids at school in case on them got it in their heads to hurt her.

They were a family, and they looked out for their own.

When Sarah was six years old, she developed her own sense of style. She alternated between wearing dresses with socks and Mary-Jane shoes, trousers in white or black. She always wore her hair long, or in a ponytail. When down it would be either crowned with a brightly colored hair ribbon tied in a bow, or a hair band.

Everyone thought the girl was innocent, and in many ways she was, but she wasn't stupid. She knew how dangerous the world was, and she did read the papers and watched the news. But she kept quiet about a lot of things, and she never gave up trying to work out what had happened to her parents.

She wondered if they hated her enough to dump her in a wonderful orphanage. If so, their plan had failed because she was happy here.

The older kids in the orphanage let her come with them whenever they went out, and they kept a close watch on her as she watched them do things as teenagers. It might have been seen as social suicide by other teens to have a small girl come with them, but the orphanage kids didn't need to worry with Sarah. She had a way of going about unnoticed.

The teens taught her some things that small girls didn't or wouldn't learn at such a young age, but Sarah took it all because she liked to learn. She learnt how to fight hand to hand after reading a story about a shop robbery, and how to hurt someone twice her size. The teenagers who taught her these skills made it clear they weren't happy teaching her any of this stuff, but she showed them the story, and told them she wasn't going into the world without at least knowing how to protect herself, and the other kids had relented quickly.

The orphanage in Richmond was not far from the House. It was said that a Victorian scientist had been experimenting with the ungodly, and had vanished, but there had been images of him once or twice over the decades. He never grew older, he was always young and wearing the same clothes of high quality.

The house had been left alone over the years because no one truly knew when the Victorian scientist would be seen again. There were rumors that the man was either a ghost, or some sorcerer, but the people who'd started and circulated those rumors were superstitious.

Naturally Sarah was intrigued. When she heard the rumors, she didn't put any stock into them. She would often walk close by the house. The local council had never been able to sell it because of all the stories and hearsay, no one was willing to demolish it unless there was another war involving aerial bombing, in which case it was hoped the building would be leveled to the ground.

That suited Sarah just fine; she was fascinated by new things, and she had no fear. When there was a day off school, Sarah put on the act of getting away from her books, and went to the house. Getting in wasn't a problem; the place had been boarded up with a fence ringed around it, but there were the occasional gaps. Sometimes the local kids would knock a board down here and there for a dare, though none of them dared go inside the actual house itself because of those same fears that had been circulating for years. It didn't take Sarah long to find a large enough hole she could squeeze through, but she did a careful circuit around the fence in case somebody came and boarded the fence up again without her knowledge. To her relief, she found a couple more holes in the wall.

Sarah turned back to the house. Time hadn't been kind to the place; there were plants overgrowing in the garden, moss and vines were growing all over the walls, and the thin glass windows had numerous holes from numerous stones being thrown through them from the number of the daring kids over the years.

None of that mattered to Sarah, and so she approached the house cautiously but she wasn't afraid. There was something about the place that was calling to her, like it was destiny.

The inside of the house was well furnished in Sarah's eyes, typically Victorian with portraits and ornaments on the walls and tables. Some of the chairs had dustsheets on them to prevent the decades of grime and dust from damaging any of the furniture, and great cobwebs hung down from the walls. Sarah grimaced, and gingerly stepped to the sides of the walls to avoid them.

She explored the house, upstairs first so she could learn more about the person who'd lived here. She found a great bedroom with simpler servants quarters nearby. Sarah searched through the furniture in case there was a diary, and she kept her ears open in case there was a cat prowling about, or someone else had summoned the courage to do what she was doing.

She didn't find much on the upper floor of the house, and she had to use her torch whilst keeping her spare and batteries close by to navigate safely. Now Sarah didn't believe those crappy stories about ghosts, but even she knew the signs of a haunted house. Whoever the man who owned this place and what had happened to him, Sarah wasn't convinced he was dead. The sightings of him were too widespread for that, but this house didn't seem cold.

When Sarah finished her explorations of the upper floor, disappointed from not finding out what had drawn her to the house, she started exploring the downstairs area. There wasn't much; a living room, a salon, a dining room followed by a kitchen, and a pantry. Sarah noticed the unusual collection of clocks and other time related books, papers, and artworks on the wall, and she paused to examine one or two of them before she went on with her visit. There was nothing in that collection to interest her, but she made a mental note to take some of them when she left the house. But the owners clear obsession, or near obsession of time if that was the case, intrigued her. It also made her wonder if the stories about him being a ghost or some kind of sorcerer were misinterpreted.

When she entered the dusty laboratory, Sarah thought she'd died and gone to heaven. She had checked the upstairs rooms first to partly hold back the urge to go looking for the laboratory; Sarah had learnt enough about the house's owner to know he'd been a scientist, so she wasn't surprised by the labs existence. In fact, she'd been determined to visit it. She couldn't work out why no one had bothered to break into the lab in decades if she could do it in a matter of seconds, but she suspected it was all down to fear.

Sarah carefully walked around the lab, running her fingers over the lathes and drills, and the jars full of chemicals, and the tools on the walls. But two things caught Sarah's attention; a small stack of books and a lead box.

Sarah walked over to the books, took one from the bottom and opened it. What she would read inside the book changed her life forever.

Sarah put the letter with the others on her desk, and she took out a fresh piece of paper to compose the return letter asking him to take care of himself and not to do anything stupid, she knew she was guilt tripping him with the reminder of how his anger had taken hold of his mind and made him go after Pettigrew without considering the consequences - Sirius had commented in one of her previous letters that she sounded like her mother, she'd shot back that thanks to his carelessness she'd almost been dumped with relatives who clearly hated her enough to just abandon her, familial ties be damned.

Sirius had had no retort for that. Sarah knew she was a bit unfair towards her godfather, but she didn't really care. Still the man had been through a lot without her adding to his guilt.

* * *

Hogwarts. Months later.

"Sarah Potter." Dumbledore called, a piece of parchment held in one hand as he called her name. Silence filled the hall, before the students started talking amongst themselves. To the girl in question, it was like hearing the buzzing of bees. Really angry bees. Sarah sat paralyzed in her seat, breathing hard. No, no this couldn't be happening.

It should have been expected. Of course, a year at Hogwarts was always going to be dangerous for her, but how the hell did someone get her name entered in the Triwizard Tournament?

When Dumbledore called her name again, Sarah looked panic stricken. Why, why was it every time a new year at this fucked up school started, something always happened to her? Sarah mustered her courage, and got out of her chair. Panic transmuted into anger. No, not anger. Fury. No, not fury.

Rage.

Her magic, in tune with her emotional state, darkened the hall and silenced the sounds of the students as her hair seemed to crackle and fizz with electricity as her anger spiked. Slowly, she walked up to the head table, and before Dumbledore could speak, she said clearly. "If I find that you had something to do with this, I will carry out the threat I have warned you about for the last three years."

Dumbledore didn't need to ask for a reminder about the threat. He knew it well enough, and what's more there was nothing he could do about it. Ever since Sarah had entered the magical world, she'd discovered how much of her life had been manipulated by the meddling old man. She'd accumulated a massive amount of information already, most of it from the goblins and the gnomes since she had accounts with both. She always held it over Dumbledore whenever the old man tried to become a bit too meddlesome.

McGonagall opened her mouth to rebuke Sarah, but the girl just turned and walked to the anteroom.

The moment she entered she saw the other three champions.

Viktor Krum, the Quidditch pro, was scowling at nothing - Sarah may not have liked pranks, but she did have a sense of humour, and Krum could certainly use a smile. It would've made him more handsome.

Cedric Diggory, the Hogwarts champion, was looking at her in puzzlement but he didn't say anything. The only champion to speak to her was the Beauxbatons champion.

"Vat is it," Fleur Delacour asked her. "Do zey vant something in ve hall?"

She thought Sarah was a messenger girl. The girl in question had no idea how it worked in France, but Dumbledore would be more likely to come into the anteroom himself or send one of his other teachers. Before she could reply, the adults came in.

Sarah stood to the side as the teachers and Crouch and Bagman went on with their debate before it was decided she would have to participate in the tournament. Adult or not.

For the next few days, Sarah worked on trying to find a way of getting out the tournament, and keeping away from the other students. Her life at Hogwarts had become a living hell; students were cursing her in the corridors, the teachers had started showing their true colours, and worse her own house thought she was a Dark Lady in training, courtesy of the rumors spread by one Ron Weasley. Honest, she didn't know where he got his imagination.

Sarah had managed to find refuge in a few places in the castle. The kitchens with the house elves, who genuinely did not care one little bit if she was a champion or not, though Dobby might just look at her awe struck once or twice, and the room of requirement. In many ways that room reminded her of her Time and space machine.

The thought of her time machine made Sarah pout sadly. She'd been growing the ship for a long time, using knowledge of the future to develop it and make it perfect. It was her centre during the months she was away from Hogwarts. Being separated from the ship at a time like this made her ache for the chance to find out who'd put her name in the goblet of fire.

One thing had come out of her self imposed isolation, well two things. Firstly, she'd checked the anteroom the goblet had been moved to before the champions names were pulled out, and she'd discovered that the age line didn't exist. Dumbledore had instead cast a ward that prevented any kind of trickery, so besides that anyone could put their names inside the goblet before being repelled like magnetic poles.

Also, she'd learnt that the Triwizard magical contract had a loophole; in the past some of the champions had been incredibly young, even a couple of years younger than Sarah was now, so the loophole had been drawn up to allow the magical guardians of the children four hours to recant their place as champion.

That had been why Dumbledore had been twinkling his eyes with that knowing and triumphant smile on his face. He'd known about the loophole just like he'd been aware of her emancipation, the shield she'd put up that he hadn't managed to pierce had failed her this time and he'd known it.

The second thing was what the first task was.

Sarah had been walking through the grounds alone. She hadn't been going to any of the classes after the last few weeks since the first week where the students would confront her with curses and rude names, and the teachers contempt for her. It made no difference to her if she suddenly failed at school in the magical world; she had access to a time machine, she could slip back and continue with her non-magical education outside Dumbledore's control. Sarah had been looking for adequate back doors to leave Hogwarts in case the school was either too dangerous or Dumbledore and his staff were not what they were cracked up to be when they taught her their craft. Sarah knew her celebrity status would give Hogwarts a black mark if she left the school, but it would serve them right if she left the magical world.

Oh, the idiots had no idea her memories for leaving the school were mounting. Each day she would collect them, and put them in a little chest. She didn't bother marking them, the contents alone would speak for themselves.

After the last session, Sarah decided to go for a walk around the ground with a perception filter necklace around her neck to avoid the idiot students hunting her down because they were so bored - she'd already cursed Malfoy, Weasley, the Weasley twins, Ginny Weasley, Susan Bones, and Hannah Abbot and that moron Finch-Fletchley because of those badges. She didn't care what they said, she was just sad the students would not listen to her denials she'd put her name in the goblet. She simply lost her temper.

Sarah walked slowly through the grounds, listening to the sounds of the nearby Forest. The grounds were one of the few joys she had at the school, disagreeing with Hagrid's claim she would enjoy her time at the school.

Just like so many other things. Sarah craned her head up to look up at the darkening sky, and god the stars were beautiful. They were gleaming like diamonds illuminated on a gleaming velvet of black or midnight blue. She'd dreamt of exploring them for years since her research into time travel showed her the key to the stars.

Thanks to the time and space machine Sarah had already travelled into the past and into the future, but she wanted to see so much more in her life, so much more. She wanted to walk on new planets, meet people from Earth in the future, but right now she was chained to this wretched school.

The roar interrupted her thoughts.

Sarah's head shot up as she looked around. The roar was close, too close. Oh please, Hagrid, not another monster. Honestly, she was pleased she'd dropped Care of Magical creatures when Hagrid had taken the class after she'd found out he was teaching it, though she'd helped stop the Ministry from offing that Hippogriff to humiliate Malfoy and his ponce of a father.

Standing up, Sarah walked along the path to where the roar came from. She knew she should just walk back to the castle, but Hogwarts wasn't a place where monsters usually hung around, but with its history...Her eyes shot open when she came to a clearing bordered with thick trees. Massive cages shaking and creaking with jets of flames shooting through them as massive shapes crashed against the bars holding the dragons prisoner.

Dragons!

Sarah closed her eyes with a groan. Oh no.

"Stupid humans!" One of the dragons roared furiously, throwing itself against the bars of its cage to emphasize the rage it was feeling. Sarah blinked. How could she understand the dragon? In fact, how could she understand all of them?

Another dragon joined in, a massive creature with terrifying spikes at the end of its tail. "How dare you touch my children! Harm my children, and I will roast you alive in your flesh!"

They were female dragons. Mother dragons. Nesting dragons. Sarah swallowed. She'd read enough about dragons to know nesting mother dragons were amongst the most dangerous dragons alive, but it was obvious why they were here. They were for the first task, she'd learnt enough about the tournament to know magical creatures of the dangerous variety were used for the first task.

But something didn't make sense. How could she understand them? If she heard the dragon, then maybe she would be able to talk to them when she went up against one of them. It was a possibility, but Sarah had no intentions of going into the first task without a few back up plans.

The revelations of the dragons focused Sarah for the next few weeks, and with the help from the house elves she managed to train herself in spells not in the books. House elf magic was more free than wand based magic, and despite some of the elves caution in teaching her how to use her power without a wand, Sarah rose to the challenge. Using her powers like a house elf made her feel like a person who was proud of herself. Besides, she was enjoying the lessons - they hadn't half exasperated Dumbledore during the wand weighing ceremony, she'd ignored the detentions she'd gotten from that.

For the house elves teaching a witch their brand of magic was almost seen as blasphemy, but being house elves they'd obeyed the will of the witch without question. Thanks to them, she was able to pop from one place to another - take that Hermione! - and use her magic and bend it to her will.

But like everyone else Sarah needed a break, and uncaring about the consequences she went to Hogsmeade. The villagers went along with their daily business, and they didn't pay any attention to the young girl in the midst, protected by her perception necklace. Sarah honestly had no idea what would've happened if she'd gone without the necklace, but the villagers couldn't do anything. She wasn't really popular right now. Rita Skeeters' articles hadn't helped a bit.

Finally she came to a pub called the Hog's head. It looked dilapidated compared to the Three Broomsticks in the village and the other shops. But it looked quieter compared to the rest of the village, it just looked rough. Sarah shrugged and went through the doors, turning the necklace off as she walked inside. The place was certainly colder and dustier than the Three Broomsticks, and there was no buxom barmaid here, just an old man who looked familiar.

"What're you doing here, girl?" The barman asked her as she approached. Sarah frowned at him. She was naturally disdainful of adults because you knew nothing about them and what they might want. In the muggle world, men old enough to be fathers kidnapped girls and raped them, in the magical world it was more terrifying. With spells compelling you to do things, wizards could make girls do anything.

Sarah knew she was in the metaphorical lions den, but she wasn't going to back out just yet. Stupid, yeah but she wanted to get away from Hogwarts, where the students were mollycoddled all day long.

"Getting away from Hogwarts for an hour or two. Butterbeer, please." She dropped a couple of galleons on the counter - one to pay for the drink, the other to shut him up. The bartender snorted with a quirk of the lips that appeared as a smile, lifting a bottle of butterbeer from under the counter. Sarah eyed the layer of dust on the glass dubiously. The man saw her look, and he wiped the dust with an equally grimy duster before handing it to her. He watched as she opened the bottle and took a slow sip. "You look familiar," he said conversationally.

Sarah stilled.

He went on. "You remind me of a girl who'd been here before, only she was wrapped in a green cloak."

Sarah frowned, taking another sip from the bottle. Despite the dust along the sides it was quite tasty. "What color was her hair?" She believed the bartender was mistaking her for Lily Potter since everybody claimed Sarah resembled her despite her black hair. She was surprised the barman replied, "Like yours."

Sarah swallowed. "When was this?"

The bartender glanced up at the ceiling, scratching his head. "Nearly...15 years ago." Her stomach sank.

"Well, I'm 14 now, the arithmetic is obvious." Still Sarah frowned. "She looked like me?"

"Yeah, she had a similar lightning...shaped...scar...on her forehead," the bartender said, trailing off as he realised who she was. Sarah bit her lip. "You're Sarah Potter?"

Sarah looked down. "Yeah, I am." She raised her head defiantly, daring the man to say something stupid to her though inwardly her stomach and intestines had turned into butterflies.

The bartender snorted, much to her surprise. "It's okay, lass. Its just I don't get that many celebrities in my humble abode." He ignored the snort that came from Sarah. Humble indeed. "Anyway, what brings you here? What's my idiot of a manipulative brother done this time?"

"Manipulative brother?" She repeated before taking a proper look at the man, his height, the beard... "You're Albus Dumbledore's brother?"

She should have figured it out when she'd come inside the pub, it was so obvious. The man saw the obvious panic on her face, and did his best to reassure her. "Its okay, I won't tell him you're here-"

"You won't?" Sarah replied. "Why? Your brother enjoys meddling in my life. Why would you help me, and why should I trust you?"

"Because I can't stand it when he pokes his long nose into business not his," he replied before holding out a dirty hand. "Aberforth Dumbledore, at your service." He gave a rather lousy bow. "Pleasure," Sarah replied, trying to hold back the grimace for touching the dirty hand she was presented with.

Aberforth picked up the cloth and started wiping glasses in front of Sarah, who was wondering if there was any such thing as health and safety in the magical world. If there was, this place would've been closed down years ago. She wondered if there were rats nearby, but she didn't dare lean over the counter. There might be cockroaches.

"So what brings you down here?" Aberforth's question broke through her thoughts, and Sarah shrugged. "I wanted to get away from the castle. I don't want to talk ill of your brother, but it sounds like you don't like him," she added with a curious gaze.

Indeed it sounded like that to Sarah, those comments about him being a manipulative idiot had been delivered bitterly. Sarah didn't give a monkeys what secrets the Dumbledore family had, but she was intrigued nonetheless by the seeming lack of a brotherly relationship between the two men.

"I don't, and its okay," Aberforth replied simply, keeping one eye on her as he idly wiped the mug. He'd wiped it so much but it was incredibly dirty. More dirty than it had been before. Sarah wondered if he should be bothering keeping the pretense of cleaning when he was so bad at it.

"Do you mind if I ask you something?"

Sarah put her bottle down to give the man her undivided attention. "Sure."

"Is it true you really piss him off? I've heard stories coming from the school since you arrived." The look on Aberforth's face looked like he was holding back the urge to laugh. Really laugh.

"Didn't even know those stories existed," Sarah replied with a grin. "But yeah, your brother tries to send me to these relatives of mine each year. He never seems to learn from the last time he tried that. I also think he had a hand in choosing what house I should be in at the castle."

Aberforth's face looked thoughtful but not totally surprised by that. "Aye, that doesn't surprise me."

"It doesn't?"

Aberforth shook his head. "No. My brother has an uncontrollable urge to manipulate the lives of everyone around him. He seems to believe life and the wizarding world are things to manipulate like the pieces on a chessboard. I've also heard stories from teenagers who come into the village who don't seem to properly fit in their houses. What house had you planned to go into?"

To say Aberforth was surprised to see the indifferent shrug from Sarah was an understatement. Most kids who attended Hogwarts were excited, and had planned their futures out along the way.

"I'd liked the look of Ravenclaw back then but how I see they're a bunch of bullies. I didn't really want to come to Hogwarts in the first place, but I wanted to learn more about my history. But the hat barely touched my head when it shouted Gryffindor, but I don't fit in with that house, and I've got no real friends. The only acquaintance I'd had, Hermione Granger, backed off from me, not that I care now." Sarah replied though she wasn't sure why she was opening up to Aberforth. He seemed like a good listener.

He sighed. "That sounds like my brother, telling people who they can be friends with, he was the same as a kid, the nosy bugger. I think he put you into Gryffindor so then you'd look up to him whilst the people in that house spy and report on you to their hero," he sneered the last word. Sarah wasn't surprised by that, she'd often suspected some of the Gryffindors who'd tried to ask her questions and get her to open up more to her and the house were only doing it because of outside prodding.

Aberforth looked away. "Many people believe the castle has gone down hill since my brother became a teacher, but personally I think it started a long time before that point."

Sarah frowned at him as she reached over for her bottle. "What do you mean?"

"When I attended Hogwarts, there were school rivalries between the houses, but that was normal. It's not like it is now. When I went there, all the rivalries were friendly, competitive. After Albus left, well you can imagine can't you?"

"You think your brother had something to do with the wedges between the houses?" Sarah deduced.

All the houses had been stereotyped a long time ago, but if the relationship between them had been anything like it was now with the Founders then how the hell could they have established Hogwarts?

"Yes," Aberforth's lack of hesitation concerned Sarah. "Don't ask me why, but he always seems to have some kind of plan. Don't ask me why such a plan would turn harmless competition between students into cursing enemies that would hex first and ask questions later. Be careful, lass."

Sarah smiled. By the time she left, she'd almost forgotten the surprise Aberforth had dropped on her head about seeing a girl with the same scar on her forehead.

* * *

The sight of Sarah wearing a simple outfit in black waiting for them by the quarry the First task would be held surprised the students, the teachers and the champions. It had been a while since they'd seen the girl who'd gone into a self imposed isolation away from the students, unfortunately stoking the rumors like a blacksmith's fire that she was a dark lady.

Sarah kept away from the others, only listening as Ludo Bagman explained the tasks. A golden egg, she had to retrieve a golden egg from a dragon? Why don't they send us on a trip to Chernobyl? She thought irritably, wishing she could drop these idiots in the centre of the infamous nuclear disaster. See how they did when not even their precious magic could protect them from radiation sickness.

Even with her ability to understand their language, Sarah didn't want to take risks with this kind of magical creature. The organisers...They were idiots. No one if they'd bothered to look at Sarah would've seen the sadness and the contempt on her face. Sarah was sad because the dragons were being tricked. She'd often visited the dragons though she hadn't worked up the courage to speak to them.

She was certain her idea would work, it was logical after all if she could listen and understand the dragon's language then she could speak it. Contemptuous because the magical world was so stupid it never considered the possibility dragons were sentient beings. She was also contemptuous of the champions; did they really want all this? Couldn't they achieve something some other time when they weren't so close to being hurt?

Sarah ignored the champions and Bagman until the choosing of the dragons, and she stepped past everyone and stuck her hand inside the bag, anything to get it over and done with. Sarah ignored the remarks from Fleur Delacour, and pulled out the statue of the Hungarian horntail, the big black dragon.

Bagman commented it was the worst dragon of the lot.

Sarah glared at him.

The dragon was even bigger up close. Sarah swallowed hard to hide her fear of the massive creature. Her view of the dragons had been screened with the massive cages that stopped her from getting a good idea of their shapes and sizes, besides it had been dark at night. The black dragon certainly lived up to its name, and its spiked tail drew most of her attention. It flicked to and fro like the tail of a giant cat. It's eyes were catlike, too, and they narrowed at the sight of the tiny girl walking closer to it and the nest.

The dragon roared, but Sarah could understand what it was saying. "Puny little human. Learn from this lesson my children, no human can be trusted if they chain you to the ground in an uncomfortable nest and starve you."

Sarah's sympathy for the dragon soared. The dragon's remarks, she put those out of her mind; she agreed with them to a point, and she hoped she could prove to the dragon not all humans were selfish, two dimensional idiots.

She drew her wand and praying this worked, she enhanced her voice and spoke to the dragon. Unknown to her, she was speaking in parseltongue. For some reason the language allowed you to communicate with every reptilian creature.

"I'm truly sorry for what's happened to you."

To say the dragon and the crowd was surprised by her unexpected move, some of them had expected her to run and hide like a cowardly little girl at the sight of the huge beast, was an understatement.

Someone shouted. "You see! She's dark, she's speaking in parseltongue like in second year."

The dragon roared in the direction of Ronald Weasley, who sat back cowering in fear. Sarah hid her chuckle behind her hand as the words behind the roar entered her mind. "Silence, you foul, disgusting little human! How dare you interrupt the speaker!" The dragon turned her head over to Sarah, who suddenly stopped laughing. "You speak my language, young one?" The dragon asked in a softer, kinder voice.

"I do. I'm not aware of the change, to me you're speaking my language. No offense." Sarah added quickly; after the way she'd been treated, the dragon probably wouldn't want to know when they were speaking together, all Sarah could hear was english. But the dragon took it with surprising mildness.

"Why am I chained? Why was my nest tampered with and brought here?" The pain in the dragon's voice made Sarah want to curse the idiots behind this tournament. Could they not see the dragons were proud, noble and sentient beings?

"I don't know, and I don't blame you for being angry with them," Sarah bit her lip, and she no longer hesitated in holding back the sadness in her own voice. Something the dragon noticed right away. Female dragons, especially the mother dragons, doted on their young. Even unrelated females adored the offspring of other dragons. To them, a child in pain was torture. They never dared harm children.

The horntail knew the boy who'd cursed the Chinese dragon in the eye had caused her nothing but grief and misery despite the reassurances given that it wasn't her fault the spell had made her trample the nest. The horntail had been dreading her part, she'd expected something similar and had prepared herself to kill the human if it tried to harm her nest intentionally or not. There was a good reason her breed was feared after all, but Sarah had surprised her. She'd never imagined a human who was kind, seemingly friendly, and could speak in their language.

The dragon tried moving closer to Sarah but the chains stopped her halfway, and the movement startled the girl, causing her to step back in fear for her life.

"Do not be afraid of me, young one," There was noticeable hurt in the dragon's voice, forcing Sarah to crane her neck to gaze upwards into the dragon's eyes. For a long time the two of them stared at one another.

"You have been hurt badly, young one. Your eyes speak of sadness spanning a long time," The dragon said finally before cocking her head again curiously. "But you have also found good things in your life as well."

Sarah nodded, thinking about the time and space machine, the years she'd spent at the orphanage learning new things, and her friends. Her smile faded as she remembered her opposite life, here at Hogwarts where she was seen as a celebrity first and not a quiet girl who just wanted peace and friends in her life, but had an annoying headmaster, irritating and irrational house and year mates who tried to hurt her and expecting her to take it each time.

"What is your name, young one?" The dragon asked making Sarah think the dragon could see the pain in her eyes, and she was glad for the change of subject. The pain she could see, the anger, the righteous rage the dragon felt that Sarah could see in the way she moved about the way she and her kind had been treated by the hubris of the wizards, it made Sarah want to cry.

"Sarah. My name is Sarah Potter. I was brought into this tournament because of outside intervention; if I had had my way then I wouldn't be in this pit, let alone the school." Sarah shut her mouth, it hadn't been her intention to rant, but she was tired of all the rubbish that happened to her. If anyone other than Sirius had gone through anything like this, it was the dragon infront of her.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to rant," Sarah apologised sheepishly. "It's nice to meet you."

She didn't dare reveal the fact she'd already known and seen the dragon, heard her speak.

The dragon bowed her head in a show of respect, shocking the already stunned crowd in the stands. "It is...nice to meet you too, Sarah Potter. My name is Thusa. Why are you here, and what am I doing here with my brethren?"

Sarah knew she had to be careful with this one. If she was blunt, the dragon would forget her friendliness and simply kill her. Choosing her words carefully, Sarah spoke, "The people who organised this tournament...They had a fake egg placed in your clutch, a clue for the next phase of the tournament. How many eggs did you have already?" Smoke had started pouring from Thusa's nostrils as the dragon's already frayed temper started to reach levels where the dragon would unthinkingly unleash her deadly arsenal on any being foolish enough to be too close. At that moment, that being was Sarah.

Sarah, thankfully, recognised the signs at once, and hurriedly added, "Go to your clutch and see if I am lying." She knew challenging a dragon was suicide on her part, but it was all she had. Words would only prove her greatest weapon once the dragon realised the human girl was telling the truth, but if she saw the evidence, she'd believe the human girl. If she was lying...

The dragon went back to her clutch, her tail swinging dangerously close to Sarah as she turned and making the girl gasp with fright and bend down out of the way, the deadly spikes whistling through the air. Sarah bit her lip to yell a protest, Thusa was pissed off enough as it was without her added to it.

Thusa studied her nest. Like all mother dragons, she had intimate knowledge of the dragons about to be born from their eggs, and she knew the sex and size of the individual infants thanks to the unique shape and scents of each egg. It was only human ignorance that made them think all dragons looked alike, but really all creatures had their own physical identity, unique to their own persons.

Quietly, though with a low growl, Thusa counted the eggs. She'd birthed ten eggs, and yet there was an eleventh; a bright gold egg. She'd known the nest had been tampered with, but she hadn't expected this blasphemy. She'd merely thought the nest had been moved, and her eggs separated from her protection. Thusa wasn't stupid when she examined the egg, its craftsmanship spoke of only one race.

Goblins.

Thusa threw her head back, scaring the crowd with her loud, prolonged roar of rage. If they'd been empathic, they would've felt the rage from her massive form, but humans lacked empathy, or they ignored it. Holding back her rage after letting it loose that her nest had been tampered with and perverted by human and goblin, Thusa turned back to face Sarah. If she hadn't been sentient and had only just noticed the egg, she could and would have lashed out, breathed flames powerful enough to break through the puny shield spells the wizards believed would save them from her wrath.

But Thusa, like all dragons, was highly intelligent, and sentient. She remembered clearly what the girl, this tiny and clearly frightened girl, had said about this egg being important to the next phase of the tournament. Silently she bent down, and gently used two of her front talons to pick the egg up before moving slightly awkwardly but carefully, mindful of her remaining eggs.

Something occurred to her when she reached the tiny form of the witch, something that made Thusa pause before she dropped the egg into the witch's outstretched and waiting hands. "You do not seem to want to participate in this travesty, Sarah. I can see it in the way your body moves. You have thought of a way to leave." She observed, cocking her massive head. The sun was gleaming on her scales.

Sarah chuckled at the dragon's observational skills. "You're right. I've found a way around it. You see, the magical object that put me in this tournament was confounded into thinking I was from a different school and slightly older than I am now. It is a binding magical contract, but the contract only affects the person who PUT my name into the goblet of fire. By my leaving after today, after this task, they're going to lose their magic. I can't think of something more horrifying for a witch or wizard, can you?"

The dragon suddenly roared, terrifying the spectators, but Sarah watched in surprise. The roaring wasn't roaring at all though she knew if she didn't have the power to understand the dragon.

Thusa wasn't roaring, she was laughing.

"Oh, I like you Sarah, oh that is brilliant. You've put a lot of thought into this, but be careful," the dragon's voice changed ominously to serious. "I do not mean to offend your brethren despite your obvious contempt for them, but they do not give up." With that, Thusa dropped the egg into Sarah's outstretched hand. "Thank you and you didn't offend me, the people in this world are idiots," Sarah smiled up at Thusa, letting the dragon bow her head in acknowledgement, but she didn't leave. She had something else to do.

"Thusa, I know you and the other dragons have been starved. Can you speak to the other mother dragons and let them know I'll free them so they can have a feast, and no its not me!" Sarah added quickly.

The dragon was amused rather than annoyed however, and nodded, and sent the message to the other dragons. Feeling the other mother's joy and excitement ringing in the air, Thusa was about to ask Sarah how she was going to free them.

"I haven't done this before," Sarah remarked sheepishly as she clicked her fingers, and at once the chains binding the dragon where she was disappeared. Thusa roared happily as the crowd screamed when they realised what Sarah had just done, the sound carrying over to the other dragons nearby to let them know this wasn't a deception. The dragon's joy was boundless as she took off into the air, wings flapping madly, and she roared in happiness and delight of just being free from captivity. She did a complete circuit of the arena enjoying seeing the fear on everyone's faces with her sharp, eagle like vision but keeping well out of range of their spellfire, and then landed gracefully. It amazed Sarah with just how light footed such a massive creature was, though she could and should possibly keep her distance when she brought the others here.

"Call to the others, tell them to come back here, and tell them I am their friend."

Thusa lifted her head and again she sent a message, just as Sarah clicked her fingers again, this time focusing on more than one chain thanks to her studies in house elf magic. Up in the stands, the spectators looked on in horror as the other dragons came roaring before swooping down into the arena, fully expecting their savior to be killed in seconds.

The fact she was their savior again never entered their minds, nor did it occur to them that the horntail had had the time and the opportunity to kill Sarah effortlessly.

The girl in question was oblivious to their fear as she climbed a few boulders. She was just standing there was the dragons landed with the same effortless grace Thusa had shown earlier when she'd been freed. Silently she closed her eyes, focused on a set of images and concentrated on them, and she clicked her fingers. Unknown to Sarah at the time, TARDIS, her time and space machine had picked up on her mistress's magical command, and the sentience behind the TARDIS allowed her to help her mistress.

The TARDIS was designed to be intelligent, not dangerously intelligent beyond the organic sentience it was capable of. In many ways the timeship was an extension, and evolution, of Sarah's own mind and being, and she was forever linked to her mistress. When Sarah had released the dragons, the TARDIS had helped, and now she was helping now with this effortless task.

The spectators were wondering if their eyes were deceiving them. Yes, that must be it. The arena had been empty, then it had been filled with one massive dragon with a terrible tail, and one witch. Then, as though they'd blinked, the arena wasn't sporting one dragon, but three others. The same dragons who'd met the previous champions. Their shock was because the dragons and the single, tiny figure of Sarah Potter, weren't the only living things in the arena anymore. No sir. No, now there were cows, sheep and pigs milling about, making a lot of noise that spoke volumes of their confusion, which quickly changed to panic at the sight of the hungry dragons.

Sarah watched with a slightly queasy expression as the dragons leapt onto the animals she'd summoned, swearing off meat at once when she heard the panicked squeals and moos from the animals being torn apart so quickly and efficiently. Sarah licked her lips and tried to close it all off, not daring to cast a spell to blacken the environment and shut out the sounds of the slaughter in case Thusa wanted to speak to her again. She just watched, feeling more than a bit sick.

The Chinese fireball gratefully crunched down hard on a live, struggling pig. She'd been in a terrible temper since her turn in the tournament, with the disgusting little human hitting her in the eye with a curse, making her stumble and kill some of her eggs. For a dragon mother to kill its own offspring...it was a grave disgrace.

She burped, and looked sheepishly, for a dragon, at the human who'd freed her. "I apologise young Sarah for my rudeness," The dragon apologised with a thick Chinese accent, hardly surprising since she did come from China.

Sarah waved the apology aside. "It's alright, I'm just glad you're eating okay. Is there enough?" From what she knew of animals, they needed a specific amount of food to survive, and Sarah had no idea what the needs of a dragon were.

"For now," the Welsh green replied this time, her voice indicating she'd been far from happy with the judges decision to postpone their food. "We'll be feeding again soon."

"Well, I'd better be going," Sarah said finally, picking up the golden egg. "It was nice to meet you all, and I hope your children are happy with such noble beings such as you as mothers."

Sarah had just turned away when Thusa spoke for the first time since the first meal she hadn't had in a while had been delivered to her like a delivery person bringing a pizza box to the door. "Sarah," the dragons waited, suddenly grave as Sarah turned around, hearing the change in the dragon's tone at once. "Be careful," Thusa said before Sarah could ask what the problem was. "Your song is ending."

"What do you mean?" Was her blood turning to ice? Sarah mused to herself. To those watching and noticing, the change in her body language was obvious, as was the sudden frown of dread on her face.

"Something will be taken from you, something precious before something just as precious is given to you...and then, he will burst into flames with your ending," The dragon said, and Sarah could hear the strain in Thusa's voice as she tried to look into the future before finishing up with the final word.

Sarah felt as though her insides had turned to ice. Your song is ending, Thusa had said. She didn't like the sound of that. She looked between the dragons, noting their uneasiness. They could see it too, but they had no further clue what the prophecy meant. Prophecy. Sarah didn't believe the future was written in stone.

Okay so it was in some shape or form; the humans leaving Earth in factions, leaving the planet to the two groups who would degenerate, and come to call themselves Eloi and Morlock, but she didn't believe in vague prophecies like this, but there was something...sudden and sharp, cold about what Thusa said. The dragon wasn't as cryptic as a centaur, she wasn't as selective with her wording as Trelawney, but she was still unclear about the meaning of what she'd just imparted to Sarah.

She ran the words through her mind; something will be taken from you, something precious before something just as precious is given to you...That didn't make sense. But the last bit, he will burst into flames, she knew only one person who was a major threat to her who had wanted her dead for a long time since before she'd been born.

Lord Voldemort. Dumbledore didn't count, the old wizard was just a meddlesome old fool. The threat from Voldemort, the shadowy one, was more frightening than Dumbledore.

Voldemort was coming for her, and if Thusa was right, she would die taking him with her. Or was it really that simple?

Sarah nodded shakily, and then walked away. She didn't notice the clear sadness of the dragons as they watched as this saintly and kind hearted girl walk off, the shadows hanging over her shoulders increasing their weights on her young form. It angered the dragons that humans constantly hurt their own young by fighting, but there was nothing they could do. This was Sarah's fight, but they would remember her for the kindness she'd bestowed on them.

Up in the stands, everyone had seen the sudden sadness in Sarah's posture as she left the arena, and they wondered what the dragons had told her. They saw, but didn't recognise the sadness in the dragon's bodies.

* * *

Numb with shock, Sarah allowed herself to be lead by Madam Pomfrey into the medical tent. She barely listened as the irritating woman bustled about, asking her questions and checking her over with spells.

The other champions of the Triwizard tournament kept a respectful silence. Their initial anger of this slip of a girl stealing their thunder in the tasks had disappeared into awe when they'd watched Sarah speak to the dragon, letting it free and bringing the others into the arena before bringing them tons of meat to eat. To do that without fear, she was tiny! She looked as though a gust of wind could knock her off her feet. Instead, she'd gone into the task, and instead of casting spells, she'd simply...spoken to the dragon. On top of that, she'd freed it, the dragon had given her the egg, she'd freed the other dragons and gave them food!

And she had done it all without getting a burn or a scratch. She'd beaten them by a wide margin, but right now she was just sitting there silently, staring into space absently. It made them slightly nervous, and like the astonished spectators the champions wondered what the dragons had told her. Judging from the way she was, it must be terrible, but she wasn't telling anyone.

And it was their own fault.

Fleur Delacour watched the girl. She'd been so angry and put out that a girl a few years younger than herself had taken part in the tournament, but now she'd witnessed her in action, Sarah Potter she realised was her number one opponent.

Unfortunately for Fleur, Sarah didn't care about competition. The dragon's prophecy was fixed firmly in her present train of thought, and the last thing on her mind was another second in the purgatory that was Hogwarts, and spending another moment of her time in the presence of these arrogant fools. She'd learnt that Viktor Krum had cursed the dragon he'd been set with in the eye, causing her to stumble and crush half her eggs; the callous disregard for life made Sarah disgusted with the sight of the scowling teenager, and it made her despise the wizarding world more than she did. Added to that, a stuck up French Veela, from the way she'd acted towards her - she'd heard the rumors - and the pretty boy of Hogwarts himself being close by didn't make her feel one hundred percent happy.

Oh, joy she thought when Dumbledore and some of the teachers walked in, Sarah idly noticed a few of her housemates behind them. By their expressions, they expected her to forgive them. Well, they were in for a rude awakening. Besides she didn't really give a damn about the house, she was just surprised by how fast they'd turned on her.

Though she shouldn't have been. Gryffindors were not noted for their common sense.

Sarah didn't say a word as the headmaster approached, in fact she barely gave any hint she was aware of the presence of him and the others. She had too much on her mind. She'd long suspected Hogwarts of being below standards of safety, this latest incident clinched it. But the dragon's prophecy had worried her because it sounded familiar.

Something will be taken, Thusa had said, but what did that mean? Something important, like maybe an eye or something?

Sarah shrugged with the realisation she was putting too much thought into what the dragon had said; she'd worry about that later when the time came, but she would take precautions, though she wondered if it would ever be enough. She was just as interested in the bits that came after.

"Sarah?"

Sarah realised that Dumbledore had spoken to her, and judging from the expressions of those around him, they were clearly worried for her mental state. Their judgmental attitudes sickened and disappointed Sarah, but she guessed she shouldn't have been all that surprised. This kind of thing had followed her around the magical world for a long time already.

"What?" She asked; it occurred to her this was the first time she'd had the beginnings of a conversation with another human being. She put her head between her legs. "Well, if you're going to say something, get on with it already," she said impatiently when no-one spoke. Her nerves had been rubbed raw recently, she knew nothing good would happen with any more metaphorical poking.

"I must say that was a strange tactic, speaking to a dragon. I never imagined it possible myself," Dumbledore began. Sarah didn't bother looking him in the eye; she knew that with that tone his eyes were twinkling like mad. It made you want to strangle him. "But you seemed distraught at the end. What did the dragon say?"

Truthfully Dumbledore refused to believe the dragons were intelligent. How could they be? They were beasts.

Sarah took a deep breath to control her sanity a little better. There was no chance in hell she was going to tell Dumbledore what the dragon said, with that kind of information people would probably think her insane regardless, but Dumbledore could try something stupid to capitalise on it. He could obliviate the memory from her mind, keeping the whole thing to himself. Not going to happen old man, not a chance. He had no right to decide what she needed to know.

If he did that then she would die without remembering the warning, and Sarah didn't want that.

Her answer was simple. Really, Dumbledore should have expected it. It was the same old answer she gave him whenever he tried poking his nose into her business. Sarah cursed the magical world for making Dumbledore out to be some kind of Jesus Christ figure. "Mind your own business," she sighed.

"Miss Potter, twenty points from Gryffindor for your disrespect to the Headmaster, and look up when we speak to you." McGonagall, you could always trust the old cow to defend the old man.

Suddenly Sarah no longer gave a flying fuck. She was tired, emotionally drawn from what she'd just gone through, the prophecy the dragons had given her, so the last thing she wanted was to listen and explain herself anymore to these people. She'd tried to tell them she was innocent only to not be believed, and she was tired.

In a cold, distant voice that shook with suppressed rage that had Fleur step back with a gasp at the anger she was feeling permeating the tent, Sarah spoke in a dark voice. "Do not let my calm demeanor fool you Professor, because I am far from calm. And there is a good reason my head is down; its so then the headmaster can't rape my mind like he's tried for the past few years."

There was silence. No one said Sarah was lying, her voice was too harsh for that. "I am tired," Sarah carried on, her voice carrying its exhaustion plainly. "I am tired of this school, which I hate more than anything in the world, but I'm sickened by the lot of you. My parents gave their lives for this stuck up, stinking society which should have died long ago, and I was dumped on a doorstep, and the old fool you stand up for without a thought Professor, keeps trying to send me back to my relatives. Newsflash and a repeat you old, decrepit, naive fool, they dumped me first, not the other way around. They never loved me and they never would, surely that tells you something? If they loved me so much, as you claimed, then why did they DUMP me in an ORPHANAGE?! Unless of course those godforsaken lemon drops have fried the little grey cells in your brain."

McGonagall went pale. She'd warned Dumbledore about the Dursleys a long time ago, but she'd always assumed they'd at least taken the girl in as one of their own. To find they hadn't cut through her heart. She'd been a great friend to the Potters, and had watched their excitable baby girl had become the girl before her. How could she have gotten it so wrong? Her respect for Dumbledore was fast disappearing.

Sarah was unaware of her head of house's thoughts, but even if she had known she wouldn't have cared. "And the dragons, did you know they have a sense of self, a sense of identity? No, of course not, that would mean knowing something different. Your world has been stuck in the dark ages for centuries. You're stagnant in your beliefs. But its not my problem. I don't care if you all kill each other or the non magical world wipes the lot of you out. But back to dragons, they're sentient beings, and you chain them up, mistreat them and their young, and you starve them for the sake of a tournament! That makes you evil, pure evil. But then again, none of care about children. If you did then you wouldn't have stuck that stinking pet Hagrid called Fluffy inside the third floor corridor."

She glared into the eyes of the Durmstrang champion. "And you, the dragon mother has killed her children because of you. Did you parents not teach you right and wrong as a kid, or do you simply not care you murdered innocent children?"

She didn't wait for a reply, she just stood up slowly. "It doesn't matter. I'm leaving Hogwarts. I've been thinking of leaving for a long time."

Dumbledore at once protested, his plans for the girl required her to stay at the castle. For the first time she looked up at him, and McGonagall saw something she'd never seen on Sarah's face. There was genuine hatred there in her green eyes. "Don't you dare tell me I can't leave," she hissed. "I made the arrangements legally since the Christmas of my first year, the same year you tried to send me back to that doorstep. They're perfectly legal, and you know it." Sarah leant closer. "Did you never ask yourself why I was so cheerful after the holiday? Anyway it doesn't matter now," she waved a hand dismissively. "I'm going. Don't come after me, any of you. Just stay away."

Sarah took a step towards the entrance when Dumbledore opened his mouth again. What he said was a real low.

"Your parents would not want you to leave with your education unfinished," he said the words he believed would be the magic words to bring control of Sarah back under his thumb. His eyes widened with horror when the tent began to shake, and he was lifted bodily into the air. The gasps and cries of surprise and horror were distant sounds to his mind; all he could see were two emerald green eyes burning with rage.

SLAP!

"Don't you ever use my parents in your sick little schemes, you meddling old shit! Don't you DARE! Try that again, so help me, I'll skin you alive and feed what's left of you to the dragons!" Sarah spat angrily as Dumbledore tried to use a hand to rub his burning cheek but he couldn't move a finger, let alone a hand. "The paperwork for my leaving is already in your office and filed in the Ministry of Magic, and don't bother looking for me either."

She vanished with that before McGonagall could tell her she could not leave because of the contract binding her to the tournament, but a man's cry of pain had her rush out, ignoring the pained cry coming from Dumbledore as he fell to the ground with the cancelation of the spell holding him up in the air. He could take care of himself in her opinion. After all she'd done to Sarah, making her feel like rubbish, it was least she could do for the girl.

What met the old deputy headmistress's eyes when she came to the source of the cry made her gape in shock. There, lying on the ground with a ring of surprised and stunned at the sight of the blond haired man with Mad Eye's eye and peg leg and staff lying on the ground.

Severus Snape's voice was a whisper.

"Barty Crouch?"

**Author's note - Stop SOPA if you want to stop the US government from banning fan fiction. Here's the link - .gov/petition/stop-sopa-2014/q0Vkk0Zr **


	2. Chapter 2

**The Time Traveller.**

**Hearing the Prophecy.**

Now free of Hogwarts, Sarah spent the next week playing around in Muggle London. On the off chance the magical world were looking for her, she masked her aura by slipping back into the past a week or two before she'd left Hogwarts. No longer a Hogwarts student, Sarah was finally free to be her own person for a change, rather than someone the magical world wanted her to be.

Gladly she set fire to her school robes but she kept the books and her wand. She watched her robes burn in a heap, wearing one of her dresses with a brightly colored hair ribbon tied into a bow resting gently on her head, her trademark look, with a smile on her face. She was free, but her smile faded when she thought about the prophecy the dragons had given her.

It still worried her, but she was going to try and have fun.

She went all across the city, going to the various places like the museums and art galleries. She went to see the films in the cinemas, stayed out late at night and trying hard to avoid any contact with her friends from the orphanage; they knew she was presently in school since she kept in touch with them since she posted the letters personally by leaving Hogwarts under Dumbledore bent nose.

The old headmaster had tried hard to find her friends and erase their memories of her, but she'd managed to stop him in the past.

With her limitless access to the TARDIS returned, Sarah found it hard not to travel back into the past. It was on one of her little trips Sarah remembered that rather odd mystery Aberforth Dumbledore had given her about a girl with the same scar as her.

Sarah watched the rise and the fall of the central column in the centre of the TARDIS console slow down to a stop as she brought her mistress to the exact date Aberforth had given her.

She smiled as she looked around the control room, loving the design of the TARDIS. It had an Aladdin's cave sort of appeal, with its purple walls with bright, shining ornaments on shelves next to books and other bits and pieces Sarah had accumulated over the years. The ceiling was the most stunning; it was a holographic muriel showing the numerous stars, constellations, and worlds the TARDIS could see in the galaxies within the local group, and even a few others well beyond. There were comfortable chairs and couches scattered under the image with desks with books on them; Sarah read for pleasure, unlike some, and she had enough mental memory to handle reading short story anthologies and poetry books.

The ceiling was bordered with what looked like wooden beams in black. The floor was black too, matte and unshining, if it was shining she'd probably have gone skidding across the floor though some of it was covered with a few rugs she'd picked up on her travels.

The console itself was standing on a purple dais but it was black. The console was separated by panels with a central column containing the time rotor within. The technology of the console was high tech, despite the low tech appearance of the room itself, and somehow it made the console room even more...magical.

It was a good place to relax, the serenity of the starscapes made her feel like she was flying, or lying amongst the stars.

Normally Sarah enjoyed the peace within the console room, but today...She sighed. She didn't want to leave the TARDIS, not even for this. Aberforth had made it very clear that the girl she resembled looked very much like the pictures of her mother Hagrid had brought her in that photo album as a means of breaking the ice before summer started in the first year.

Sarah knew, if she left the time machine, her life would change. A wry grimace appeared on her face as she remembered the prophecy the dragon had dropped on her head; her life was changing, and if the dragon's prophecy unfolded as she thought it would, then her life would come to an end...

Swallowing, Sarah desperately tried to rid herself of the nasty thought that came from that prophecy, the only outcome. But she couldn't, she'd lived with the knowledge she was the last of her family, that her mother's only relatives had known and hated her very existence. Her mind went to the song, what'll I do by Irving Berlin, the part where I'm alone with only dreams that would not come true entered her mind. How true. The prophecy of something she would lose, and something being given to her, what ever that was entered her mind, but Thusa had said her song would be ending, and she'd a good idea what song meant.

Her life.

Aberforth's memory of what had happened when he'd seen the girl who'd resembled her had been vague, which was odd since he seemed to have such an exceptional memory, making Sarah believe someone had erased his memory. That made some sense. Taking a deep breath Sarah picked up her perception filter necklace, and she released the magnetic lock on the doors before leaving the TARDIS.

Walking through Hogsmeade village without people pointing and gaping at Sarah was a strange experience for her. She could tell the First Voldemort war was in effect; there were a few shops that had boarded up already, and those few shops still open weren't getting much trade. Sarah felt sorry for them, she knew the first war had sapped the magical world's will. It didn't help any the people were so complacent in their lack of spine, not helped by the Death Eaters only needing to appear before everyone rushed out of the way.

Such was Dumbledore's tenure at Hogwarts, teaching the students forgiveness, but also stupidity. Sarah was so disconcerted from the sight of this Hogsmeade to the one she was used to. None of the shoppers or shop owners noticed her walking down the street, they had their own business to take care of.

It was with relief she approached the Hogs Head. It didn't look too dissimilar from what it did in her time, and she had to wonder if Dumbledore's brother actually knew how to clean the grime accumulated on the dumps' windows.

The place was the same as she remembered, but there were differences. There were four people in the pub she recognised straight away - Albus Dumbledore and his brother, Sybil Trelawney both sitting on a table far away from the door, and the last one was a surprise. Severus Snape. A younger version of the same man, but still the same, greasy haired bat of the dungeons.

Sarah had to tear her eyes away from the sight of the three younger Hogwarts teachers when Aberforth asked her what she wanted. She threw two Galleons on the counter and asked for a butterbeer. Aberforth handed her the bottle silently before moving off to some other task. Sarah chortled silently, realising that although Aberforth had noticed and seen her, he'd been too busy with other things. Hence the reason his memory was vague.

Sarah shook her head, and silently went over to sit close but at a good distance away from the Hogwarts teachers, though judging from the way Trelawney was speaking, she was being interviewed for a job.

Sarah had never rated the woman, she'd found her annoying even though she'd never actually being taught by her in third year, though they'd had encounters - the woman becoming overly dramatic like a charlatan in a circus, telling her she would die soon. That had been more than enough reason to not attend her class. She had heard stories from some of the more series students and even some of the teachers, and the last thing she wanted to hear was a student, with her luck herself, being given a death notice a week into their new year. What a welcome.

Dumbledore had tried to have her placed in Divination; she had needed to exercise her rights as a student to avoid it, but it had been a near thing. That was then, this was now, and judging from the way Dumbledore was apologising to the woman, he didn't consider divination worth having at Hogwarts. His voice was pitying for the woman. Sarah could understand that, Sybil Trelawney was pathetic but something was wrong. Dumbledore seemed to want to keep the subject away from his school. That didn't make sense to Sarah; if Dumbledore believed, like she and every hard worker did, that divination was a waste of time, why would he even have the most pathetic practitioner at Hogwarts under his watch, and why would he decide she would benefit from it?

Finally Dumbledore stood up, noticed by Snape who kept a watchful eye on the headmaster with his black, tunnel like eyes. "I am truly sorry, Miss Trelawney," he was saying apologetically, "But I am afraid you will not be hired at Hogwarts as the next Divination teacher."

Sarah couldn't see Trelawney's expression, but she could hear the tears in the woman's eyes and hear the sobs. "But I have the gift-," she said, trying hard to prove herself.

Dumbledore shook his head. "I do not think so," he interrupted. "Not five minutes ago, I told you I would ask for a particular brand of firewhiskey. I asked you what kind I would order-"

Taking a leaf out of Dumbledore's book, Trelawney interrupted him, her voice becoming harsher. Her anger did not phase Dumbledore who had met and dealt with threats ranging from dark lords and unruly and rather boring schoolchildren. A weak woman like Trelawney was not going to intimidate him. Sarah shook her head at the pathetic woman's attempts; did she not know who this man was?

Still keeping his voice polite, Dumbledore carried on as though he hadn't been interrupted. "And you didn't get it right. You also didn't realise I was testing you. The gift of Divination has been disappearing from this world, and seers are too rare to be taught. Perhaps it is a talent best left to die. Good day."

Sarah couldn't believe what she was hearing; this was the same man who taught children? Granted she didn't know much about Dumbledore's past, but she would never have imagined him to deliberately condemn a magic art, even one as wooly as divination, to death. Still there was logic to his words, if a talent died out then how could it be taught?

But wait, if Dumbledore was leaving with that, why was Trelawney a teacher at Hogwarts after being rejected? Was something about to happen to make the old man change his mind? A second later she got her answer.

Dumbledore turned to leave when Trelawney stopped sobbing, and she went stiff. "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches ... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies ... and the Dark Lord will mark the savior as his equal, but the savior will have power the Dark Lord knows not ... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives ... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies ..."

Sarah watched Dumbledore stiffen and turn back to look at Trelawney, shock on his face. Sarah had heard plenty of stories of the woman in her second year when she'd asked around the school for opinions when she'd been selecting her electives for the upcoming Third year courses, and they'd been far from encouraging. The woman found it next to impossible to properly see into the future, and every year she would predict the death of one of her new students. Some of the more cynical students couldn't comprehend why Dumbledore would keep such a dodgy and pathetic subject running, but it figured since the old man still kept a left over of the old Dippet regime, the ghost professor Binns.

But what really surprised Sarah was the wording of the prophecy, it was Thusa's prophecy all over again. If anybody else had heard the prophecy they wouldn't have believed it, but unlike what she'd just heard, Sarah didn't think that the art of seeing in the future was limited to Centaurs and seers alone. Maybe all magical creatures had a limited ability to see what the future held, like a feeling. A barometer of time.

Truthfully Sarah wasn't sure if she should ignore or allow the prophecy, or should it be warning, that Thusa had given her. So Trelawney was a seer, eh? Sarah wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it for herself, but she had no regrets she'd followed her instincts and stopped Dumbledore from pushing her into the course. She ran the prophecy the woman had just said through her mind, the mark the savior as his equal bit, and the born as the seventh months dies part...it all stood out to her.

She was the savior in the prophecy, the wording proved that. It seemed the prophecy wasn't fixed, if it was then it would have given the gender of this savior, but it hadn't. That meant other children could have fitted the mold, that is if they'd defied Voldemort no more than three times, but who in their right minds would defy that sociopath three times? Her parents, Sarah thought sourly. The time traveller had always cursed her parents for getting involved in the magical war, if it hadn't been for that they would never have needed to go into hiding and she wouldn't have been orphaned.

Now she had proof of it.

Hatred surged through the hot tempered girl. Hatred for this scruffy, disgusting woman with her jam jar glasses, and for her former Headmaster burned within. This was why her parents were dead, why Dumbledore had forced her to try and take divination so she'd accept the prophecy easier, and why Voldemort was trying to kill her.

This was why Thusa's prophecy connected so neatly with this one; the dragon was predicting her death. Her real death. The shadow fell on her...

Sarah was disturbed from her thoughts by the black figure of Snape getting up from his chair, heading directly for the door. Dumbledore was still staring at Trelawney, stunned.

The woman didn't seem to have remembered her trance. "What?" she tittered stupidly at Dumbledore.

The innocent, clueless question snapped Dumbledore out of his stupor, and he only managed to get his wits back. Just in time, too. At the sound of footsteps, the old headmaster swung round quickly just as Snape was slipping out the door.

Sarah was surprised when Dumbledore whipped out his wand in front of the few people in the pub, and fired a curse at Snape. In her time Dumbledore's turning a blind eye to everything Snape did in the potions class and in the corridors of the school was legendary, just as his endless comments that he trusted the man. But in this moment, she could see there was no trust between them, but she had a suspicion this would lead to that point.

Snape didn't bother taking his wand out to try and shield himself because he knew his powers weren't a match for Dumbledore's level, but he did manage to escape.

Sarah frowned as she watched Snape get away with Dumbledore in pursuit. The old headmaster paused before he glanced back at Trelawney. "Please stay here until I return," he told her before he moved to leave and get after Snape. He was halfway out the door, gaze still focused on the woman when his gaze caught sight of Sarah.

The girl sat like a deer caught in headlights. She hadn't expected Dumbledore to start paying more attention to his surroundings, and though on an intellectual level she was aware this was not the Dumbledore she knew, she was worried he would try something with her. But no, the old wizard just looked at her in recognition and puzzlement, and Sarah knew why; her mother was presently alive in this time, she was older, and she had red hair. In comparison Sarah was shorter, younger, and she had black hair tied in a bow with a hair ribbon.

The old headmaster seemed torn between his curiosity and his desire to get after Snape. The latter, fortunately for Sarah, won out, and he started chasing after the greasy haired younger wizard, deciding the girl would still be there when he got back. Then he would find some answers.

Pity Sarah was going to disappoint him. She'd noticed his body language, and used that time to make her getaway.

When Dumbledore returned without Snape, he barely noticed the unknown stranger as he focused his attention on his new divination teacher. She may have been useless, but Dumbledore was not going to lose her. Her prophecies might come in handy one day.

* * *

In the present day.

The mood at Hogwarts had certainly changed, and not for the better. The story went that Sarah Potter had left Hogwarts, a blow for the school's standing in itself, but Dumbledore had tried to hush it all up. Unfortunately the Headmaster had not reckoned with the story put forth by a source that even the portraits, the Headmaster's intelligence network in the castle, could not find. Sarah Potter had slapped Dumbledore for his use of her parents being disappointed she wouldn't be finishing her magical education.

Unfortunately Sarah had left a cloud over the magical world since the night her parents had died, and she'd received the legendary scar signaling her defeat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and forgetting her was nearly impossible.

It got worse. A day after she'd left Hogwarts after her surprising encounter with the dragon, the DMLE had come calling with the force the muggleborns would recognise as a wrecking ball, shattering their already fragile perceptions. The DMLE had come to Hogwarts following a rather surprising package, a series of memories belonging to Sarah Potter, but the memories hadn't been sent to them but rather the educational department of the Ministry.

Oh, the uproar had been beautiful if Sarah had been there to appreciate it. In actual fact Sarah had arranged for Dobby the House elf to take a copy of those memories to the Ministry before taking another copy to the Daily Prophet in a few days time. She'd figured rightly the Ministry would've tried to hush up her disappearance the best it could, and rumors would spread in the aftermath. By sending memories to the Editor at the Daily Prophet with a warning that the Potter family would come down hard on them if they did not print the story accurately, she would make them regret it. Normally the editor would bluff, but Sarah Potter was the last of a powerful magical family, and not one to be underestimated.

As for Dobby...In her mind, the house elf owed her a mighty favor for nearly driving her from the school before her final plans were assured.

The media circus that followed the investigation of the DMLE hit the magical world and Hogwarts like a town at the base of an avalanche. The students and the teachers were put under close scrutiny, both parties receiving howlers from parents and people who weren't even related to Potter, screaming at them for answers by taking the law into their own hands.

The Aurors and Madam Amelia Bones didn't bother trying to find out who was sending the howlers because they themselves wanted answers from the teachers for their inability to not say no to Albus Dumbledore. Besides that their investigation and finding out who'd sent a copy of those damn memories to the Prophet was stretching their department to its limits. Fudge was going mad in the media circus since none of it reflected positively on the Ministry since the Ministry had never taken a good stance in Potter's past, but privately Bones believed the whole thing was primarily her fault since her family and the Potters had long since been friendly, and finding out that her own Susan, her niece, the girl she'd raised with the knowledge of their family alliances, had done nothing but sit back and take part of the bullying on Sarah Potter...Well, the ramifications were not good in her mind. What the hell had Susan been thinking? Did she really believe that Sarah would forget it when they left school? If that was true, her niece was not in any way clever, but rather stupid. School was when you built up alliances and contacts, it shaped you for the future.

The same question if their children was thick was on the minds and lips of dozens of families as they read the newspapers for the next few weeks following the memories being sent to the Prophet. Many of the children had been identified as belonging to families allied to the Potters, something that made them shiver with dread. The Potter reputation for being forgiving and unforgiving was well known; you didn't know where you stood with the present member or head of the family. Those same parents found themselves going to Hogwarts to demand answers from their children, and they left more angry with Albus Dumbledore's meddling. They were also angry with Sarah. The man had always been venerated for his guardianship of Sarah Potter even if the girl dropped him from the role quickly. Sarah hadn't tried to reopen those alliances, in their eyes. No, instead they'd received notification the alliances were terminated back when their children were aged 11 or 12, and they'd sent howlers to their children demanding to know why, but they hadn't known. That made no sense to them, Sarah must have known about the alliances for her to terminate them.

Because of the uproar, Dumbledore had had no choice but to be away from the castle to clear up the mess, and though some of the more staunchest supporters hated to admit it, they were kind of glad the castle was free of him.

Dumbledore returned to his office, letting go of Fawkes's tail feathers with a sigh of relief. The old wizard knew only his magic was keeping him alive right then, but he knew even his magical power could not keep him awake for much longer. He was pleased, once more, he was bonded to a phoenix, and everything that came with such a bond. Of all the methods of magical travel, phoenix fire was infinitely superior, and it avoided the nausea of portkeys and apparition travel, which in his present fatigue Dumbledore simply did not need.

Dumbledore took his place behind the massive desk and closed his eyes. Oh what a week, he groaned.

He cursed Sarah Potter for those memories, now he was cleaning up the mess she'd made. He summoned a House elf and asked it to bring him a good but simple dinner with his favorite dessert. A few minutes later and he was slowly tucking into his dinner and feeling his strength return to him, though a good nights rest would definitely restore his strength. The old wizard wanted the constant travelling to end so he could concentrate fully on trying to find Potter and bring her back under control.

His mind, fogged with fatigue made him snort at that delusion. If he was honest with himself, his power of control over Potter had slackened the moment the Dursleys had ignored his letter slipped in the girl's blanket only for it to disappear completely when she'd become emancipated following Hagrid's slip up.

Not for the first time he hated the fact he hadn't had the foresight to knock on the Dursley's door to make them take the girl into their home, backed up by the threat he would be watching them. But he couldn't change the past.

Wait, the past.

Dumbledore leaned forwards in his chair. The past...His fatigue forgotten, Dumbledore ran over to the pensieve he kept inside a camouflaged cabinet to prevent any visitors from tampering with it. He took out his wand and focused on a particular memory that was unforgettable, and he placed it within the bowl of the pensieve before he dipped his wand in it.

The memory unfolded as he remembered it, but unlike previous occasions where he would focus on the younger incarnations of himself, Sybil and Severus or even Aberforth sitting or working in the Hogs Head, he focused somewhere else.

The girl. He remembered seeing a girl the spitting image of the late Lily Potter, and he'd promised himself when he returned to the pub he would speak to her. Unfortunately with Severus getting away, and dealing with Sybil, he had barely remembered the girl.

Until now.

Dumbledore left the pensieve thoughtfully, tapping the runes along the sides so then the image of the girl appeared above it without the need for her to stick his head inside the bowl.

It was Sarah Potter alright, the features, the scar, the hair ribbon tied in a bow - her trademark appearance. But how had she gotten into this memory? It wasn't possible without...Dumbledore sat down in the nearest chair, staring wide at the image of the girl in shock. How? He thought, then the answer came to him. Sarah Potter was a time traveller, but how? She had had only one instance with time travel, one Dumbledore had known about and supported all along if it got her under his control. But time turners didn't have a long range, and if he could guess Sarah would never use one of them, or even a time travel spell or potion. That meant she had her own time machine. The thought was challenging since she hated Hogwarts and by extent the magical world, so that meant she would have used muggle technology to build a working time machine. Impossible. From what he knew, muggle science hadn't cracked the means to travel beyond the moon, never mind travel into the past or the future.

Dumbledore checked his watch and saw it was late. That meant Severus was asleep. Oh well, they would discuss this in the morning.

* * *

In the past.

Sarah paused over the threshold as she walked into the nursery, seeing her younger self cry her little eyes out. Some time travel books claimed if you saw your younger self there would be a time paradox that would unravel the space-time continuum, but that was ludicrous because Sarah wasn't going to touch her younger self.

She spared the infant her a pitying look, but she ignored the baby knowing she would be alright. Her very presence was proof of that, but her attention was taken in by the sight of the two adults lying on the ground. One was female, with a halo of shining dark red hair. Her face was elfin which gave her decades of beauty, and her clothing was simple.

Not unlike Sarah's, who'd seemed to have inherited her mother's style as well as her basic appearance. Their facial features were close, though Sarah imagined it would take another few years before their appearances matched with the exception of their hair colors. Sarah bent down slowly, her eyes imprinting her mothers face into her eidetic memory. She had already done this with her father's corpse.

Sarah lightly brushed her fingers against her mothers body. It was still warm. She turned a baleful glare at the other body, a man dressed in black robes topped with a cloak and hood.

"I know the truth. Watch out, Lord Voldemort. I will make you and your followers pay for all you've done, the lost children, the ruined lives," she murmured before slipping a hand into her jacket pocket and removing a syringe and a test tube with a stopper. Calmly she took a syringe full of blood from Voldemort's body.

Sarah had a rough idea when Voldemort had been originally born, but it was nothing more than a guess. She knew so little about Tom Marvolo Riddle's past, and she needed an accurate history for her to work out what he'd done to himself. There was a special genetic reader in the TARDIS console that scanned time and space for the same strand of DNA. With that device, Sarah could track down the personal history of anybody and view their past.

Granted it would've been preferable if Voldemort was still alive and merely sleeping, but if she'd tried that then Voldemort would be alerted and she would die.

This was the safest point as far as she was concerned to collect some blood.

As the tube filled with the blood, Sarah also considered, briefly, the tempting idea of rewriting Voldemort's history but she quickly thought against it. If she changed Voldemort's history she would be changing her own, and her history was far too entwined with Voldemort's to play games with. Supposing she managed it, what if she created a parallel reality where she'd never been orphaned and had become a spoilt brat without using her intelligence to create the TARDIS?

Besides if she did manage to preserve the majority of her history, there was no telling what would be altered and Sarah did not want to risk that. It would be fun if she could rewrite Voldemort's past with the real Voldemort in a cage where he could feel the effects of his personal history being rewritten like a poorly written script.

Sounds from downstairs interrupted her thoughts, and Sarah saw she'd withdrawn enough blood from the corpse. Good. She managed to hide in one of the smaller rooms close to the nursery, in her parents former bedroom. It was also the landing site of the TARDIS. Sarah slipped inside the time and space machine, and left before she saw who it was.

* * *

In the present day.

Snape came out of the pensieve, his face thoughtful. "Now I've seen the memory again, I can distantly remember seeing a teenage girl, but I wasn't paying her any attention. But when Potter was first sorted, there was something at the edge of my mind..."

Dumbledore went over a chair near his desk and sat down on it, gesturing for Severus to sit close to him. This was an informal chat, and he wasn't up to going over to his desk; an owl had dropped a letter on it this morning, and he hadn't mustered the will to go over to it. He also didn't want to keep glancing at it if he and Severus were talking over the desk.

"Do you think it was Potter?" Snape had to ask; the very notion that the girl had access to some form of time travel was startling without seeing the prophecy being told.

Dumbledore sighed. "I think so," he admitted. "She's incredibly secretive, and I believe she discovered our ability to read minds at an early point in her arrival in the magical world. But I do not know how she could have developed time travel since muggle science is primitive."

Snape snorted in disagreement. "Don't be so sure," he replied. "I subscribe to one or two muggle science magazines. Some of their contents inspire me to develop new spells and potions."

Dumbledore blinked. "I did not know that."

Snape hid his sneer of annoyance. No, you never do notice anything, do you? He thought disdainfully. "The muggles are highly interested in understanding the nature of the universe, and they've got radical theories even our greatest scholars have never imagined."

Dumbledore looked thoughtful though he believed that without the wonder of magic the muggles would never discover such secrets. Snape closed his eyes, wondering why the headmaster was so closed minded.

"Headmaster, just because the muggles live without magic doesn't mean they're stupid, but besides that I'm more concerned about the possibility that if that was Potter, then she knows the prophecy. Your security does not cover time travel."

Dumbledore was annoyed Snape had to admit that. "I know," he sighed. "If she does know the prophecy because of time travel, what do you predict would be her next move?"

Snape folded his arms. "I wouldn't underestimate the girl, Headmaster. She's very intelligent, she managed to come up with a logical argument in her first year about not knowing her parents to be compared to them. She's also no where near stupid like you seem to want her." Snape ignored Dumbledore's glower and carried on. "We have to face the facts Headmaster, Potter is a time traveller, and she knows the prophecy. She could use the time machine to destroy the Dark Lord, though I doubt she would want to change history. It was the loss of her parents that made her grow up without a family, unlike the muggles you tried to put her with. I knew Petunia Evans personally, and I know she would've treated Lily's daughter like dirt."

Dumbledore closed his eyes. He'd heard this all before. The headmaster and the potions master spent the next hour speaking, debating and discussing plans and strategies, but they couldn't agree with anything because, in Snape's opinion, Dumbledore just would or could not picture Sarah Potter as a time traveller simply because it did not fit with the image of the girl. But Sarah Potter had changed many perceptions when she'd entered the magical world, and she hadn't cared who'd gotten in the way. She'd bankrupted people for using her name without her permission, and she'd made it very clear she was not someone to trifle with. But Dumbledore still did not get it into his head she wasn't his tool, and now this new idea she was a time traveller wouldn't sink in. Snape could not believe that either, but he wasn't going to let his mind close on the possibility.

Both wizards had speculated Sarah would be impulsive, she would go back in time and change history, and both men knew what kind of history Sarah might want to change. They underestimated her; Sarah had no intention of changing history, if she did then there would be a different version of her life, and she didn't want that.

* * *

On the other side of the world.

A stack of newspapers littered on a table drew Sirius Black's attention. He might have read them all, but he still found his eyes flicking over to them once or twice. The stories about his goddaughter leaving Hogwarts and the Tri-wizard tournament had delivered a major blow to the prestige of the school and to Dumbledore.

Truthfully Sirius was not surprised. He knew how little his goddaughter thought of the old wizard, but even he was surprised by how brutal her campaign was. The evidence gathered, the memories sent to different departments of the Ministry of Magic and the Daily Prophet were already sending them buzzing like angry hornets. True, memories could sometimes be falsified, but it would promote a good deal of questions on how Dumbledore managed the castle and his affairs.

Sirius rubbed the back of his head as his mind drifted back to the letters she'd sent him, how calm Sarah had been when she'd told him about how her name had come out in the goblet, and how she'd told him this was the final straw. She was pulling out of Hogwarts. Sirius had been annoyed about that, though truthfully he could see her point about the school being a death trap. Though the old marauder would have loved it if she'd stayed at the school, he could see the magical world held no interest to Sarah. To her, it was just a place. That was it.

"Hello Sirius."

The greeting made Sirius swing round, wand already out with a curse on his lips when he saw the face of his goddaughter. Sarah looked at the wand without fear. She didn't look completely surprised by his reaction for seeing her there.

"Sarah?" Sirius said in surprise. "How did you find me?"

Ever since his escape, Sirius would only stay in one place for a few days, taking the time to rest and gather supplies. For someone of a Noble and Ancient House, it was a trying existence but he managed it. He wasn't stupid enough to give his location to anyone, not even Remus and let alone Sarah. So how had she found him?

Sarah pouted at him, the effect of her innocence highlighted by the hair ribbon on her head, and the dress she wore. Her eyes, however, were serious.

"You don't expect me to answer that question do you? I told you last year I would keep an eye on you, and truthfully it wasn't difficult for me to work out. You really shouldn't send me tropical birds."

Sirius lowered the wand. "You know about birds?"

"Of course," Sarah lied, she knew little about birds. "And it also helps I have a time and space machine."

"A what?"

Pride filled Sarah's face. "A time and space machine. I created it after breaking into a scientist's house, a scientist who'd built a time machine a hundred years ago thanks to a mineral he'd been given. I simply took it a step further."

"I see," Sirius replied, though it was clear he didn't. Sarah sighed. "I'm a time traveller, Sirius. Have been for a while now."

The reaction was more or less what Sarah expected from the old marauder. "What?" he whispered.

"I'm a time traveller," Sarah repeated.

The moment that information entered Sirius's mind, the old marauder immediately thought of something that he felt he couldn't pass up. "Sarah, that's wonderful."

"It is?" Sarah was a little taken aback by the growing enthusiasm that seemed to have taken hold of Sirius.

"Yeah," Sirius eagerly nodded. "You can save your parents, defeat Voldemort -"

"I can't take that risk," Sarah interrupted. "Suppose I do change history, if I wasn't raised in an orphanage then I wouldn't have built a time machine to go back in the first place."

Sirius paused as what his goddaughter was saying sank in, and he had to admit she had a point. He loved his goddaughter, he really did, but he honestly wished she'd grown up knowing her place in the magical world. But he knew she would never want that. No, her stance was not going to be shaken.

They had dinner inside the TARDIS where Sirius got a sample of Sarah's cooking skills. The old marauder had grown up in a magical household, gone to school in a castle, but none of those things could explain his amazement at the time machine his goddaughter had created.

Sarah told him the story. "The house was abandoned completely, maintained by the Filby's. They're a highly respected family, and their great grandfather was friends with the owner. He made it clear to his children the house belonged to someone who was a good friend. The Filby's had help, occasionally a man wearing Victorian era clothes would be seen walking the streets, touching things like he'd never seen them before. Until the 1980s, no one knew who he was, until someone who'd taken a picture of him and a kid broke into the house itself and saw a portrait of him. After that, well you can imagine. Everyone thought he was a ghost. Time travel hasn't come into the theories. It helps because it means the house is left alone, and no one would ever dream of upsetting a spirit."

"How did you build the time machine?" Sirius asked as he poked at his food.

"The Filby's had blocked the house off. They didn't touch or disturb a thing inside. Getting in was simple enough, and I found the laboratory. It contained a green mineral that according to the notes the owner of the house got from a meteor he'd found, and he studied it and he discovered time travel."

"What happened to him?" Sirius asked. Time travel had been known to the magical world for many years, but he'd never known that a muggle had discovered it.

Sarah shrugged. "I dunno. It hasn't been on my to-do list, though it hasn't been far from my imagination. His time machine is only capable of travelling against Earth's mass, meaning he can't even leave the planet halfway towards the moon."

"But yours can?"

"Yeah. His time machine creates a pocket in time, allowing him step back and simply move forwards or backwards, but in the future humanity will discover the structure of space is like water. You can fill a a hole in the ground with water, and call it a pond, an ocean or a swimming pool. Space is like that, there are layers that go down with various properties."

Sirius wasn't getting any of this, but he decided to nod and listen. He got the feeling Sarah just wanted him to listen and not ask any questions. "I made a device that can look into the future, and it helped me learn how to access this alternate dimension of space. From that I grew the TARDIS, and then I started my time travel experiments."

Sirius sat still for a moment, then he nodded. "Okay, you've got a working time machine that doesn't use magic in anyway. But what're you planning on doing, are you going to tell the muggle world?"

"No," Sarah's answer was immediate. "They're not ready for time travel. If you had a planet split into nations sniping at one another, would you give them time travel?"

"Not if they use it for war, and I'm not stupid Sarah. Lily told us quite a bit about muggle warfare when she was alive." Sirius replied. "So what are you going to do?"

Sarah didn't answer at once. She was too busy concentrating on her food. "When the TARDIS was being grown, I was already making some basic experiments with the technology, to ensure it was working the way I hoped and projected. That's why I was so determined to spend my holidays outside the magical world. Unfortunately I had to spend most of my time at Hogwarts, and as you know Sirius, its bloody hard to leave the school to head for the muggle world. Dumbledore kept trying to interfere in my holiday plans, trying to make me go to the Dursleys."

Sirius shook his head. When he'd first heard his goddaughter had been given to the Dursleys by Dumbledore, he'd gone ballistic, and it hadn't helped his temper when Sarah had told him they'd only dumped her at an orphanage. What Sirius did not understand was it the enmity between Lily and Petunia was well known. The Order of the Phoenix had known the whole time Lily had grown to dislike Petunia after deciding her sister was so petty and annoying.

It was similar to how Snape had called her a mudblood back in their fifth year. Lily had tried for years to make Snape leave the group of teenage Slytherins who would become Death Eaters the moment they hit their seventeenth birthdays, but he would not listen to her. That pressure combined with the bullying Snape received from many Hogwarts students, ashamedly from the Marauders of which Sirius had been apart of, and regretted it now made him throw away possibly his only true friendship.

Lily was not a pushover, she would and could forgive only so many times before she decided enough was enough, and she'd reached that point with Snape and her sister. Once you'd been dropped by her, she would never go back. Not even Dumbledore, who preached forgiveness on a daily basis, and turned a blind eye on the bullying at Hogwarts in the belief it would stop people going to the Dark, could make Lily change her mind about the two of them.

What really pissed Sirius off was how Dumbledore could simply leave and not look in on Sarah from time to time; the only time the old man had actually worried about her, apparently, was when Sarah neared her eleventh birthday! It was mad, the girl was the last of her family, the heiress of an old family in the magical world, and her knowledge of her world was limited, all because of Dumbledore, and he couldn't be bothered to visit her!

"I still can't believe Dumbledore put you, or keeps trying to put you up with them," Sirius said at last with a shake of his head, looking at Sarah ruefully.

"I think I know why, Sirius." Sarah looked up at her stunned godfather, who hadn't expected Sarah to say something like that. "What do you know about Divination?"

If Sirius had expected a straight answer, this baffled him completely. "Nothing," he replied without hesitation. "My family always believed in choosing our own futures, and besides you need to have the gift in divination in order to become a seer. Its not like potions, or charms, you can't learn something from it and become a seer."

"Dumbledore thought the same," Sarah silenced Sirius with a look, but it wasn't needed; the old marauder gaped. "Then, what's this got to do with divination, and what's Dumbledore got to do with this?" He asked, baffled. Where the hell did divination come into it?

"Sirius, I want you to know that if you lie in the next few minutes, because if you do, I will decide whether or not to castrate you and drop you in the middle of Ministry of Magic in London, a pink bow on your head. Do you understand?" Sarah replied seriously. "Because if you do lie to me, and I find out about it later, I will carry out my threat - innocent old friend of my parents or not, I don't care. I am not having a liar for a godfather, okay? That clear enough?"

Sirius licked his lips. There was a dangerous certainty written all over Sarah's face that told him plainly she meant every word she'd just said. He didn't doubt she would carry out her threat, if she could build a machine like this then she would be capable of anything, right? "Okay, what do you want to know?"

"Did you know that Sybil Trelawney, the biggest charlatan in the divination business, made a prophecy saying a child born on the end of July, the seventh month, would have the power to defeat Voldemort which would lead to me being orphaned, and alone? And believe me, Sirius," The old marauder gulped at the look on Sarah's face that promised pain if he'd known about the prophecy and just decided not to bother telling her about it, before her next words confirmed what would happen to him if he had known, "if you did know, I will make you rue the day you decided to keep it from me, because arseholes have conspired to take my life from me, decide what I can or can't do, and even what I should be thinking, so you'd better be honest with me. I mean it."

Sirius couldn't speak, let alone breath through his mouth. He ignored the threat from Sarah though it was at the front of his mind He couldn't believe it, but it made sense in a way; powerful wizards had a lust for more power, and Voldemort was no exception. Sirius had doubts Voldemort would've studied or even glanced at a book on divination, but he would have learnt enough to not simply ignore such a threat to his power. Prophecies were highly revered in the magical world, and Voldemort had certainly immersed himself into magical culture enough to know that. In the past, a prophecy could take thousands of years to be fulfilled and it might be gradual, but the events would certainly come to fruition.

But this...Sirius shook his head to make sense of what his goddaughter had told him. He'd...he had always thought Voldemort had gone after the members of the Order of Phoenix who had proven to be major threats to him. Lily and James, Alice and Frank...all four of them had taken the law into their own hands, much to Dumbledore's annoyance, but eventually he'd mysteriously started to support them, much to Lily's suspicion.

Now Sirius knew about the prophecy's basics, he found he wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if Dumbledore had purposefully set up the two couples to fit the criteria of the prophecy.

"No, I didn't, but if I had known and you had asked me properly, then I would've told you. Prophecies are revered in the magical world," Sirius replied at last. "You don't keep that kind of thing secret, and frankly I don't get why you had to travel back to hear it in the first place." Sirius looked at Sarah in surprise as he remembered that detail.

Sarah shrugged. "Do you have any idea why Dumbledore would keep it secret?"

Sirius sighed, smiling ruefully but Sarah saw a glint in his eye. Anger? "Dumbledore...was incredibly secretive during the war," he answered. "He believed any pertinent information should be known to him and him alone. I can tell you it soon pissed everyone who had a brain cell in their heads, and wasn't completely a yes man to Dumbledore. Your mother," Sirius suddenly grinned in memory, "your mother lost her temper with Dumbledore so many times I've lost count, she yelled at him for not bothering to take action."

"How come she didn't just leave?" Sarah asked; she'd always imagined the things she'd been told about her mother were kept to a minimum on Dumbledore's orders, and this was proof to her. She'd known her mother had fought alongside Dumbledore, but she'd never thought they'd be at odds with one another.

Sirius sighed. "I don't know, but whenever Lily suggested it he would have us leave so he could have a few words with her, though James didn't like it though Molly Weasley gave him an excuse to leave. James sometimes cursed her for badmouthing Lily."

Sarah chuckled though she wasn't surprised. Molly Weasley was one of the reasons she detested the Weasley brood, others were the bullying which was known as pranking by the twins, and the attitudes of the two youngest kids. But their mother... The woman was loudmouthed, opinionated, bossy and rude. Sarah had never had good encounters with her, Molly Weasley kept trying to make her youngest her friends without taking into account Sarah had already had samples of their true natures.

Somehow it didn't surprise Sarah the dumpy, loud mouthed bitch and her mother had never gotten along.

"What did Dumbledore say to her?" Sarah asked but Sirius shook his head, but he looked grim. "I don't know. When he was finished with her, she would come out, looking shaken. Nothing me or James, or Alice, who was your godmother and Lily's best friend could make her tell us what Dumbledore had said. I thought he might be using memory charms, but there were no sign of any memory charms when we checked. James tried to get Dumbledore to tell us, but the old man isn't powerful for a reason."

"Did he curse my family?" Sarah asked heatedly.

"I wouldn't go that far, but I will say he made it clear if it became a magical fight then James and I would lose."

Whatever Sarah was about to say, or going to say, next was pushed aside when a name Sirius had said earlier came to mind again. "Who's Alice, you said she was my godmother? Well, I don't know anyone called Alice."

The look of shock on Sirius's face wasn't forced or faked, then he nodded as he realised her question was genuine. "Alice Longbottom."

"Neville's mother? She's my godmother?" Sarah said.

"Yeah, the pair of you were right hellions when you were kids, and there were jokes that the pair of you would get married, though Molly had her sights set on you being her youngest son's wife."

"As if I would let that pig Ronald touch me. As for Neville, well he's never once spoken more than three words to me since we came to Hogwarts though I've tried. Everyone thinks of him as a joke. He can stay that way for all I care."

Sirius sat up. "In that way?" He asked seriously.

Sarah shrugged. "He can barely cast a spell properly, and he's so mild its on the point of cowardice."

"Don't you try to help him?" Sirius asked, stunned by her seeming callousness.

"I did, four times in my first year," Sarah ground out. "But he didn't appreciate it, he thought I was bullying him when I was trying to be kind, and he had his grandmother send me a howler. I sent her a scathing letter back, telling her to get the full story next time her grandson told tales. When he sat next to me in class a week later, he seemed to have forgotten what he'd said to me, and he asked me for help. I told him to make up his mind, and I refused to help. Since then he's stayed away."

The quirked brow and folded arms, and the hostile body language told Sirius not to say a word. He turned the subject around. "But I don't understand. The Potters and the Longbottoms have a longstanding alliance."

"Not anymore we don't," Sarah replied grimly. "Since first year, Neville seemed to have remembered his manners, and tried to be nice to me, and I found a letter in his dorm from his grandmother - don't ask why I went up there, and no its not what you think, scolding him for making her write a howler to me without bothering to find out who I was until the last minute. I stopped him by quoting a few passages of the letter, and snapped at him that I didn't care about the alliance between the families, then I emphasized former alliance. His grandmother was horrified by what I'd done, and she sent me a letter, telling me to forget the howler, that it was a mistake. Like I'm going to forget being humiliated in front of the whole school by a woman I hadn't even met. I sent another back, telling her exactly what I thought of people who didn't bother getting the full story. I was that angry with her. It seems Augusta Longbottom wants me and Neville to be, well closer. Neville hasn't done that, I made sure he knew I wanted nothing to do with someone who wouldn't uphold a family alliance. I found out about the alliance on my first trip to Gringotts, that is why I tried to be nice to Neville, nice to all of them, but for some reason they seemed to have forgotten the alliances to my family, so I cut them off. Oh, the howlers that had gone off when that happened were beautiful."

Sirius couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You broke off your family's alliances? Do you know what that means?"

"Yeah, and I don't give a toss." The anger in Sarah's made Sirius backpedal. "Those alliances didn't stop me from being dumped at the Dursleys, nor did they stop Dumbledore from poking his long nose into my life, and the kids of those families never blinked an eye when I told them what had happened. They didn't care, they never lifted a finger to help, so give me one fucking good reason why I should care about their prestige?" Sarah poked at her long forgotten food, getting up and then she reheated it before coming back.

"Anyway, that's not why I'm asking about divination," she got on with the almost forgotten topic. "I watched as Dumbledore got ready to stop the interview, and then she went into a trance. She says the prophecy, and then Snape is about to leave - yes, Snape is the reason Voldemort even knew of the prophecy, and I slip out. But that's not all."

"What do you mean?" All Sirius wanted was to leave the TARDIS and go after Snape, and make him pay for the deaths of his friends, but Sirius stopped when he saw her face. Sarah looked shaken. Getting up, he went over and wrapped an arm around Sarah's shoulders. He didn't say a word, he just let his presence reassure her.

"The dragon I met in the first task, her name is Thusa. She's sentient, all of them were sentient, and that ham fisted idiot Krum made his dragon stomp on her nest, but when I spoke to Thusa I was terrified, but she was reasonable. Any wild animal would've reacted violently to its nest being tampered with and would lash out at the nearest stranger, but Thusa held in her rage knowing I wasn't responsible.

"After I helped her the other dragon mothers, she me a prophecy." She twisted her neck to look Sirius straight in the eye, and she sighed. "She said my song is ending."

Sirius felt his blood turn to ice. "Go on," he struggled to say.

Sarah's breath became shaky. "Something will be taken from you, something precious before something just as precious is given to you...and then, he will burst into flames with your ending, that's what Thusa said to me. I've been trying to work out what she meant by something precious being taken from me and something just as precious given to me."

"What do you think it means?" Sirius whispered.

Sarah sighed and looked away. "Something precious taken from me before something just as precious...I can't work it out. But I do know there is a way I can survive if I die, which is what I think Thusa meant when she said my song would be ending."

"Well, that's great!" Sirius exclaimed, not understanding the sudden look of despair on Sarah's face. "What's the matter? It's great, you can survive, whatever it is that's supposed to kill you."

"It's not as easy as that, Sirius." Sarah suddenly sighed. "There is a means but I haven't perfected it. I've had lots on my mind," she added at his look. "It's called regeneration. It involves tiny machines smaller than the tip of a finger, and even millions can exist there. If I'm injured or my body is damaged fatally, then the machines will activate, and they'll rebuild my body. But there would be side effects."

Sirius sat down again, staring at his goddaughter. He was getting scared. "Sarah, what're you talking about?"

Sarah closed her eyes. "I found there are technologies that can prolong life," she began with a whisper. "I found this one and ran experiments on it because it doesn't have the criteria I wanted."

"Wanted? How can you want to change your appearance?" Sirius asked uncomprehendingly.

Sarah sighed. "Call me paranoid, but honestly Sirius I'm sick and tired of people recognising who I am. People in the magical world take one look at this and they pass judgements all over me," she pushed up her fringe, showing the infamous lightning bolt scar. Sirius sighed in realisation, of course. The scar. Sarah had a passionate hatred for the scar. "They judge me before they know me Sirius, that's one reason why I want to change my appearance. When I want to talk to someone, I want them to speak to me like I'm a human being. I hate the way the magical world look at me." Sarah looked down and sighed.

"When I first entered the magical world, Hagrid treated me as though I already knew about the damn place, what I'd supposedly done, and what had happened to my parents. I hated him and his attitude, and I haven't spoken to him since. He took me to the Leaky Cauldron, and the moment the bungling, oversized fool said my name, I was surrounded. At the orphanage, everyone around me respected each others personal space. I was used to that, so imagine how I felt when everyone went from sitting on bar stools to asking for my autograph, shaking my hand." Sarah shuddered. "I hated all that, and fucking Hagrid didn't do a thing. I asked him why he didn't stop people from crowding around me, he just said I should get used to it."

Sarah looked at her godfather, tears flooding her eyes as she fought hard to control her emotions. "I hate it Sirius, I hate the magical world more than you imagine. It's not a place I want to live in, and I know even if I travel far enough I might bump into it again. Besides that I've got a Dark Lord out there desperate to kill me. It's nice to have insurance under those circumstances."

Sirius nodded as he saw the logic. "Go on, tell me about regeneration."

"It can restore life. If I'm hit with bullets, burnt to death, then the little machines will absorb the ambient energy of the surrounding environment. Think of the sun putting out lots of heat and light, and use that energy to rebuild my body. But I would have a difference in my appearance, my personality might be slightly different though the basics would be the same."

Sirius tried not to show how unnerved he was by Sarah's explanation of what regeneration entailed. Personality differences? A change in appearance? Did Sarah really want that?

"Would you really want to change your appearance and personality?"

Sarah gave a snort. "I sometimes ask myself that question whenever I think about regeneration, but then I remind myself about the kinds of freedom I'd get if I did regenerate. Come on Sirius, don't tell me you're not fed up with looking like something that's crawled out of a coffin? Haven't you wanted to properly change your appearance since prison?"

"Can't say that I have," Sirius smirked happily. Roguishly. "I mean, why would I want to regenerate or whatever you call it when I look brilliant already?"

"Sirius," Sarah said, her voice a blend of amusement and irritation. "You look like someone out of a horror movie. Do you honestly think anyone is going to date you in your current condition?"

Sirius's smile faded. "You've certainly inherited your mother's acidic tongue," he said bitingly.

Sarah snorted. "So they keep saying. I can't regenerate."

"What do you mean?" That was news to Sirius. Sarah looked away. "The technology I took from the future...It's not perfect, it only used half of the regeneration effect I just described. What I was talking about is merely theoretical."

Sirius sagged. "Now you tell me. Here was I thinking maybe you can live through this."

Sarah ground her teeth. "What do you expect? I'm working with technology centuries ahead of anything I've seen before, and its not my speciality. Some of the principles aren't even known, and won't be for centuries. How am I supposed to work around that? My idea for regeneration doesn't even exist where it comes from."

Sirius wrapped his arm comfortingly around Sarah's shoulders. "You'll find a way to walk away from all this, I know you will."

Sarah smiled at her godfather's attempt to cheer her up. It had taken a slap to the face to get Sirius to stop seeing her as a blend between two people she'd never met or spoken to before, but what the man lacked in common sense - the chasing of Pettigrew for instance rather than doing his job and taking care of her from that oaf Hagrid - he made up for in his protectiveness.

She wished she had his confidence. She could work on the regeneration theory until she was old and grey, her skin withered and thin like parchment.

It still wouldn't make a difference.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Time Traveller.**

**The Graveyard.**

Sarah stepped back from the lead casket resting on a a futuristic looking sled with relief. Standing here, with the soul pieces of Lord Voldemort, inside her beloved and precious time ship made her stomach turn. Even with the lead casket containing the horcruxes, Sarah felt disgusted by their presence.

When Sirius had left her to go back to Britain only when she'd told him she'd be there for the third and final task of the tournament, she'd told him she would be a while. Sarah knew her godfather had taken the news of her impending death badly, just like he hadn't liked hearing she couldn't regenerate.

Sarah knew that her death would hit Sirius hard; she was practically all he had left since her parents had died, and Remus had turned out to be nothing but a Dumbledore supporter.

Sarah and Sirius's disappointment with Remus Lupin had been a major blow to the pair of them; for Sirius it was knowing two of his friends had ended up serving someone more powerful and coldly calculating that they didn't care if someone who was close to them was a loved one.

Standing close to the sled, Sarah considered what her godfather had told her, how when she'd been a baby she'd been reticent about Dumbledore or Pettigrew holding her. The knowledge that even when as a baby she'd distrusted the old fool had surprised Sarah, and it had angered her that Lily and James Potter had never considered the old man to be as untrustworthy as Lord Voldemort or Cornelius Fudge.

But Lupin...Sarah had learnt a great deal from the man, definitely. But her distrust for him had come when she'd asked him about ways of stopping the dementors from constantly attacking her. Instead of doing his job as defence teacher, and giving her a chance to learn how to cast the Patronus charm, Lupin had backpedalled and said Dumbledore had punished the dementors so they would not try and come on the grounds of the castle again. Sarah had detected the lie immediately; she knew Dumbledore didn't care about the students of the castle enough to do something like that. If he had cared then why would he let the Minister, an embarrassment to nature, allow them to guard the castle so submissively? Why hadn't the old man had the foresight to get this useless arse to teach the students to protect themselves? It was their job for heaven's sake.

Lupin may not have taught her the spell, but with the name of it in her mind, she quickly found the books in the library to give her help, and she was able to get the spell's formula in arithmancy for her own experimentation in case she met one of the abominations again, and she soon mastered the spell. When she'd learnt about the man's connection to her parents thanks to the wedding photo in her album, she'd been furious. Sarah had shown him the picture. Lupin had realised he couldn't hide the truth forever, and so he told her what she'd wanted to know.

The revelation the man was a werewolf didn't make her blink, she didn't care if the man had suffered. What really pissed him off was how he used the fact of his curse to shy away from life. Most disabled people in the muggle world moved on, some of them even made a big deal out of life but Lupin, he didn't, he just stayed still. In that conversation, he made the mistake of dropping Dumbledore's name. He had the cheek, the arrogance to say to her face the old man considered her to be a loose cannon, and he believed that. Sarah had left the classroom, her back to him, and she said she never wanted to see him again if he was just going to quote Dumbledore, and she didn't care if he suffered from silver poisoning.

Lupin's betrayal really hurt Sarah, but it definitely killed Sirius.

Sarah shook her head. Thoughts of the betraying werewolf would not change the fact she had horcruxes inside her TARDIS. The charting to Lord Voldemort's past had made it easy for Sarah to learn what the evil wizard had done to himself. When she'd found out about the horcruxes, she'd almost been sick. It was just like Voldemort to do something so disgusting to himself that ripped his soul into little bits.

She also felt ill knowing the magical world would even learn how to do something like that. The horcruxes were made by committing the act of murder of a soul, an innocent soul. Voldemort had murdered children to make these things, but she was happy they considered these soul fragments as evil. The diary she'd encountered, the one that had possessed Ginny Weasley, had been a horcrux, one she had destroyed personally. Whilst she didn't see the school as a home regardless of what Dumbledore might like to claim, she did not like what Lucius Malfoy had tried to do, by discrediting Weasley senior like that.

Sarah ignored the diary. She'd taken care of that, and there were other more difficult horcruxes for her to recover, and she had. She knew there were only two horcruxes left; one of them was in her scar, and the other was a snake Voldemort had picked up during his exile.

Sarah closed her eyes as she thought about her impending death. It was like the shadow of the Grim Reaper himself was draped in her breathing space, but she couldn't do anything about it. She knew enough to know she wouldn't find out if in the future she would discover how regeneration properly worked.

The time traveller stood in that spot, in her TARDIS, unmoving for a good while. She wasn't in any rush to get this over with. She knew once this was over, she'd be closer to death's door than she had ever been in the past. Finally Sarah screwed up her courage. She slid down a pair of sunglasses over her head so her eyes were protected, and she opened the TARDIS doors, enlarged and expanded to let the sled through the entrance of the timeship.

Picking up the remote control, Sarah activated the controls and guided the sled sluggishly through the open TARDIS doors, waiting for it to achieve an optimal distance before sending the sled into warp. She watched the sled though she had to look away from the bright glare as the sled went on a one way trip to the sun.

As she closed the TARDIS doors Sarah couldn't help but feel that those horcruxes had been simple enough to find and kill, but it was the snake and the one in her scar which would be the most tricky.

Sarah guided the TARDIS back to Earth, thinking about the horcrux inside her scar. She didn't know a decent way of getting rid of them; it would've been fantastic if the magical world had indoctrinated their young with the knowledge of horcruxes, not the creation, but how to find and destroy them. That knowledge would've gone a long way to making her job easier, but that was the magical world for you. No forethought, no common sense. You shouldn't destroy knowledge, but that was their problem.

The TARDIS landed, and when Sarah checked the scanner she saw the sight of Lord Voldemort, resurrected and restored to his full strength. Nearby were two Death Eaters, Sarah had no trouble recognising Peter Pettigrew but the other was robed in flowing but heavy black robes complete with a silver mask. There was no sign of the snake.

The identity of the Death Eater meant little to Sarah when she saw the scary sight of Voldemort standing before a statue with Cedric Diggory locked to it. Voldemort did not look happy, in fact he looked down right furious. He was ranting and raving, and Diggory looked frightened not that Sarah blamed him. She frowned as she watched Voldemort rant angrily, wondering why he was getting so worked up. It never occurred to her to turn the volume up on the scanner.

* * *

Voldemort was indeed furious as he backed away from the boy wearing a Hufflepuff Quidditch jersey. A year of preparation, thirteen years of being deprived of a body, of the luxury of possessing a wand had been messed up because Sarah Potter had escaped the Triwizard tournament. When Peter Pettigrew had captured that stupid woman Bertha Jorkins, Voldemort had believed he could achieve two of his more important goals in one fell swoop; the restoration of his body and power, and the death of Sarah Potter.

Voldemort had managed to contact three of his Death Eaters, using Barty Crouch Junior to intimidate Malfoy Senior because Pettigrew lacked the power and repertoire for spells Malfoy possessed and Crouch did, and it wasn't difficult to get Malfoy on his side though he'd had to be careful since he'd needed Crouch in Hogwarts. It was aggravating Bella was in Azkaban, the woman may have been mad and borderline psychotic, but she'd been loyal to him. In comparison Malfoy was as slippery as an oil slick, but it couldn't be helped. Pettigrew would've stuck out like a sore thumb if he'd been sent under disguise as Mad Eye Moody.

With Crouch's help, Voldemort had managed to get Sarah Potter involved in the tournament. He should have known better than to underestimate the girl; she'd proven she was far from stupid when she'd appeared in a flash of white light when he'd been possessing Quirrel, not needing to move through those pathetically simple traps Dumbledore had set up, all to test young Potter.

But the thought of that irritating girl, with her disgusting hair ribbons, made Voldemort frown. She wasn't the stupid girl some people thought she was, even he had to admit that, as she'd proven whenever she outwitted Dumbledore and that wizened old hag that followed him around like a puppy dog wanting to play fetch.

Voldemort turned slowly to face the frightened boy. Really, standards at Hogwarts had fallen if this seventeen year old wizard was any indication, he'd barely put up much of a fight when he'd been stunned. The Dark Lord had been concerned his planning would've been for nothing if the tournament had been canceled because of Sarah Potter's disappearance and Crouch's sudden turn into a squib. But no, Dumbledore had kept the tournament going, Merlin only knew how. In Voldemort's mind the tournament had become nothing more than a farce, in normal circumstances the whole event should have been called off, but Malfoy had stepped in. Under his best behavior and knowing his master's revival could still be a reality even without Potter's involvement, Malfoy had told the Wizengamot the tournament had been a disaster, but surely that should not come between friendship between three powerful magical countries. The Wizengamot, not knowing of the senior Death Eater's true schemes, had decided to keep the event going even with the protests from Amelia Bones.

Voldemort had been pleased with Malfoy's progress, and he'd just decided to make the best of it. Though he would've preferred Potter's blood for the ritual, he was realistic enough to know he was not going to get it. It was just exasperating he would need to delay his plans to fully consolidate his power over the magical world before conquering the muggles just so he could track her down. Unlike the senile old fool Dumbledore, Voldemort had more practical methods of tracking down his enemies, but he would need to concentrate on the matter to track Potter down. Rapidly thought out plans in draft went through Voldemort's mind as he considered the problem.

As it turned out, he wouldn't need to plan his revenge on Sarah Potter.

Nagini had been slithering through the graveyard. The serpent had been bored out of her mind, she was delighted her master had regained his body and his strength, but there was little for her to do. When he'd been weak, Voldemort had had Nagini ensure his safety. The snake, thanks to the horcrux within her massively augmented body, understood without the need to be told that the Dark Lord did not trust Lucius Malfoy. Nagini's existence and role as the Dark Lord's familiar was enough for the Death Eater to know attacking or injuring her would result in consequences which the Death Eater would not wish on anyone.

Thanks to the horcrux, Nagini had been feeling...tense. There was something out there, she'd felt something. A vibration in the air, but nothing was tangible to her. She hadn't reported the strangeness she was feeling to Voldemort. The Dark Lord would've demanded something more than a feeling from his familiar, but he would've listened to her thanks to his closer relationship to snakes than to humans.

Nagini stopped slithering, hissing in puzzlement. All her senses were telling her there was something out there, but it was too late for her when she was attacked. The horcrux inside the snake recognised the spell as a parsel fire spell, more powerful than the Incendio spell, and much darker. It was a step above fiendfyre, and it was enough to incinerate the snake. Nagini was only able to hiss out a cry of pain that Voldemort heard, he was just too late to save Nagini was completely bursting into flames.

"Nagini!" Voldemort shouted, the sound making Diggory wince. It was like a piece of flint being scraped down a blackboard. The Dark Lord angrily swung round on the two Death Eaters, but he only found Malfoy. He looked around for Wormtail, but before he could scream for the Death Eater, he heard a cry. A female cry, and a muffled scuffle.

Wormtail came into view, dragging with him a half stunned teenage girl dressed in a light blue dress with a collar, black tights and very small and neat black shoes. The girl had long dark hair, immaculately combed with a dark blue hair ribbon tied into a bow, Wormtail was half carrying her and half dragging her because he'd sneaked up behind her, and with his new metal hand had managed to whack her but not enough to kill her. He was carrying a wand that was clearly not his own.

Voldemort came over to the pair of them, and with one long fingered hand he pushed the girls head up by taking a handful of hair, and sending the ribbon askew. The girl winced at the pressure on her head, but Voldemort paid her no mind. "Let the boy go, tie him up, and put her in his place," he ordered. He walked back to the cauldron whilst Wormtail brought the girl closer to the statue to restrain her.

The Dark Lord's instructions confused Malfoy. "My Lord, you have already been returned to life. We do not need the girl's blood."

Voldemort turned slowly. "I don't intend to take her blood. I intend to steal something far more important to her than a few drops of blood."

* * *

Sarah cursed herself for not bothering to take the logical precaution of covering her back. All that had mattered to her had been destroying the horcrux in the snake. Now she was being lifted up from the ground, and being locked in by an animated statue. She could almost heard someone call her name, but her head was splitting from the force of the blow to her head. She was surprised the whack hadn't split her head like a coconut.

"I'm an idiot," she murmured to herself.

"A beautiful idiot, though," an amused voice replied. Sarah closed her eyes. She knew that voice.

"Hello, Voldemort," she opened her eyes. Her vision was starting to clear, and she didn't like what she was seeing. Voldemort was standing with his back to the cauldron he'd emerged from, and flanking him were two Death Eaters; Lucius Malfoy, tall elegant with his long white-blonde hair, and his polar opposite; cowering Peter Pettigrew, small, mousy, cringing and pathetic.

He was holding her wand, and silently he put it in a pocket in his robes.

Tied to a headstone with a piece of cloth tied around his mouth was Hogwarts champion Cedric Diggory. Sarah knew enough about the ritual that the two Death Eaters had used to resurrect Voldemort needed blood from an enemy, she'd overheard Malfoy talking about it, and then it fell into place. This was why the bastards had put her into the tournament, they'd wanted her blood to resurrect Voldemort. They'd had to substitute her blood for Diggory's, but what did Voldemort intend to steal from her?

Sarah's blood chilled, Thusa's prophecy returned to her mind; something precious would be taken, and how did Voldemort put it, something far more important than blood. What did he mean by that?

"How does it feel to be back?" Sarah asked, stretching as best she could. The pain in her head was a dull throb, and she felt like a fly speared to a wall with a dart.

"Soon everyone will find out what it means for me to be back, Sarah Potter, but you will be dead by then." Voldemort stood there expectantly.

Sarah quirked a brow at his expression, then she understood. She was a Gryffindor because of Dumbledore's meddling, but people didn't know her mindset was that of a Ravenclaw, but the Dark Lord didn't know about that.

He just expected her to act like the stereotypical Lion; brash, stupid, brainless.

He was in for a disappointment.

"I heard you say something along the lines of 'I intend to steal something far more important to her than a few drops of blood.' Your words Voldemort, but what did you mean?"

Voldemort wasn't the only one looking at her stunned by her attitude. Sarah used that to her advantage.

"You had one of your followers put my name into the goblet, followed by a confounding charm to make it accept me into the tournament, then you'd steal my blood and then you'd kill me. Very neat. Nothing complicated or remarkable."

"You worked it all out?" Voldemort replied after a moment of silence.

Sarah turned a sneer over to Diggory. "Faster than the badgers did, yeah. It had to be you. You've been trying to kill me for years."

"And now your luck has run out," Voldemort said softly, stepping gently over to her with a grace a ballet dancer would kill for.

"That doesn't answer my question, what did you mean by stealing from me?"

Voldemort grinned sadistically, and he leapt forwards and his wand was suddenly touching the center of Sarah's chest. With an unspoken incantation, Sarah started screaming suddenly in agony. Diggory closed his eyes at the sound, unable to watch this unbearable scene as she started to writhe in pain, but he forced his eyes open when he saw the monster from the horror stories his parents told him about when he'd been young, when the war had been in full effect and his parents had been terrified, steal Sarah Potter's magic.

Voldemort closed his eyes as the magic from the girl poured through his wand and into him. He could feel it, the rise in his power but it felt different from his own. Sarah's magic was the magic of the Potter family, and with the magic of a powerful family in his body, Lord Voldemort would be able to access the secrets of that soon to be forgotten family.

Sarah screaming was music to his ears, and he couldn't help but wonder why he hadn't tried this when Lily and James had been alive, and the girl a mere toddler.

Finally Voldemort had drained the girls entire magical core, and he broke the connection. Sarah fell forwards, panting wheezingly, coughing through a throat that was so raw it felt like someone had rubbed it with sandpaper.

She fell against the statue's arm holding her, choking and coughing as her eyes watered from the pain in her chest.

Sarah closed her eyes, it wasn't a voluntary action. Her eyes were watering, her vision was spinning, and her body felt as though someone had torn her organs out. She didn't bother asking Voldemort what he'd done, it was obvious he'd stolen her magic. What else was there, she'd felt the sudden...emptiness in her body when he'd held his wand on her.

She nodded to herself, then she groaned as it made her more dizzy. Thusa's prophecy...the dragon had meant her magic would be taken from her, hence the something precious bit.

Seeing as Sarah was too weak to escape, Voldemort hadn't seen the point of her being tied to that statue. He released her and dropped her next to Diggory. The Hufflepuff had noted her lack of strength, her panting breaths as her body tried desperately to take in oxygen. The Dark Lord had knelt down as he tied her to the headstone, but he didn't gag her, and he glanced at Diggory. For some reason, Voldemort ripped the gag out of the pretty boy's mouth, and he stood up. "I'll leave you to talk to each other," the dark wizard murmured before he strode over to join Malfoy and Pettigrew.

Cedric looked at Sarah. She was slumped down so her head was almost touching the ground. "Sarah," he tried nudging her with her leg.

She didn't make a sound.

Cedric nudged her harder.

"Go...away," Sarah managed to get out, lifting her head just enough to focus on Cedric, but the older boy could see it was hard for Sarah to truly see him through the pain she was in. Cedric tried to imagine having your magic removed, and he shuddered when he came up with the image of Sarah Potter, hunched over, pale, her face sweaty, panting with the effort to breath like an asthmatic. Being a kid born and raised with magic his whole life, Cedric found it impossible to imagine a life without magic.

The effort of speaking and raising her head was too much for Sarah, and she slumped to the ground as she drew her knees weakly to her chest. She fought to stay awake, fought to get her breath. But it was hopeless and she knew she was fighting a losing battle.

She was dying, and without the ability to regenerate she would soon die.

Sarah tried not to think about it, tried to tell herself Thusa's prophecy wasn't entirely complete, but she couldn't think her way out of this. She had to think rationally. She could barely move her head without feeling sick, let alone stand up. The bindings that tied her to the headstone with Diggory weren't necessary; she didn't think she could even manage a crawl to her TARDIS where she could escape.

Voldemort came over to her, and he smirked down at her shaking form. "Do not worry," he whispered but both teens heard him. "Soon Sarah you shall be with your blood traitor father and your filthy mudblood mother."

Cedric couldn't take that. "Don't say that, or-"

"Look at him Sarah, the stupid boy is defending your honor. Aren't you going to thank him?" Voldemort sneered down at the shaking girl. "You no longer have to worry, soon the magical world will see how weak you actually are. Lucius, Wormtail, come here, and hold on to these two." When the two Death Eaters grabbed the teenagers firmly, though they didn't really need to hold onto Sarah, she didn't have the energy to walk or stagger away, never mind escape from two grown men holding her. No, it was Diggory that proved to be the problem.

Cedric was desperately trying to escape from the Death Eaters to reach Sarah. With Malfoy holding him, and that short Death Eater You-Know-Who had given the silver hand to, he found it hard especially when Malfoy, fed up with his struggles, jammed his wand into the Hufflepuff's face.

"Stop doing that, boy, or I shall curse you so badly you wouldn't be able to see again."

Voldemort either didn't notice the altercation or he didn't care, he aimed his wand at the Tri-wizard cup and summoned it. He had to stagger to avoid getting his head knocked clean off his shoulders by the speed of the cup. His magic was still settling from stealing Potter's magic, and given time he would get used to having it all. It would be good to expend some of it.

The unlikely party were whisked away by the portkey, and Cedric closed his eyes as the familiar sensation of a hook in the navel that said the portkey had activated. All he could hope for was that anyone like Dumbledore could do something to stop You-Know-Who.

What could Potter do?

Next chapter...Regeneration.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Time Traveller.**

**The Death of the First Sarah.**

Sarah was dropped to the ground the moment the portkey deposited the party from the graveyard, the Death Eater holding her up had almost gotten a stomachful of vomit all over him. With her magic drained completely, Sarah's equilibrium was off even before the portkey activated. The spinning through the air had only made it worse, and the Death Eater sensed that when they arrived.

The moment the sickening feeling ended, Sarah collapsed with a groan to the ground, closing her eyes tightly to try and stop herself from vomiting, as a result she couldn't see what was happening. That didn't mean she couldn't hear, though. She heard the sounds of an orchestra, then brief silence, then screams, and the casting of high powered spells and curses.

Voldemort had taken advantage of the element of surprise and horror; from what he'd learnt during his long years of exile, only a small number of witches and wizards knew he was still alive. Fools. Did they really think a toddler could've defeated him, Lord Voldemort, the most powerful wizard on Earth? The issue of raw magical power was no longer an uncertainty, Sarah Potter had helped there.

If it hadn't been for his iron willpower, Voldemort would've burst out laughing at the looks of horror and the smell of fear from the crowd when he'd made his appearance.

Using that moment to his advantage was a talent Voldemort enjoyed having as every bit as his magic, and he'd started casting spells at a prodigious rate. Even before he'd stolen Potters' magic, Voldemort's ability to cast rapidly had been one of the defining terrors he'd taken into the First War.

Now with two magical cores, Voldemort's power almost burnt out his wand.

Sarah was unaware of that. She only felt the lack of strength in her rapidly failing body, but that lack of strength made her more sensitive. She almost cried in shock whilst she was still conscious when she felt someone gently pull her up into a sitting position. She opened her eyes dimly, and though he was upside down, Sarah had no trouble recognising Cedric. She wondered how the Hufflepuff had managed to get free of his bonds, and found she didn't really care. Just when she felt she couldn't feel more sick, Sarah almost threw up when Cedric was pushed to the side. When she focused her vision, she almost gasped with relief.

Sirius Black had only come out to see the third and final task of the tournament out of sheer boredom, being locked in his animagus form hadn't helped. He hadn't seen Sarah since her visit, but that was now a few months ago, but to her it was possible it had only been a week or two. He had no idea what his goddaughter had been doing in that time - no time travel pun intended - but he knew she was worried. That bloody dragon's prophecy was worrying, just like Sarah's talking of changing her appearance and personality as easily as she could change her hair ribbon.

Even so, when he'd arrived here, Sirius hadn't been able to shake off a feeling something bad was going to happen - it was probably a side effect of being a dog animagus, but as the hours passed since the massively tall hedges of the maze had fallen due to the charm when the cup had been reached with no sign of the victor Cedric Diggory since the other two champions were still present. The sudden rush of the portkey dropping Lord Voldemort, two Death Eaters and Diggory and the surprising figure of his goddaughter into the presence of the crowd had made it hard for Sirius to keep his eyes as a dog locked on his goddaughter.

Using the distraction of the screaming crowd and Voldemort's unusually high powered curses, Sirius rushed to the fallen prone body now being held by Diggory. The only thing that distracted him was panic and a primal need to protect Sarah, and he turned from a massive black dog into a human and he still ran, though he had to stop himself from stumbling from the sudden fact he wasn't using four legs anymore. He ignored it, and kept running, but he occasionally twisted his head to keep track on the three dark wizards, and though he wanted nothing more than to go after two of them, he had to restrain the urge. Sarah needed him, but he tracked them anyway, ready to take out his own wand and fire the curses in his own arsenal.

Voldemort and the Death Eaters had been moving away from Sarah when Sirius made his move, and all three of them were using the most powerful spells in their arsenal.

Malfoy was having the time of his life, and with his new silver hand Wormtail was confident enough to attack without a mask. Voldemort...the Dark Lord was firing magic the likes Sirius had never seen before. He remembered vividly the memories Lily and James had shown him of their own encounters with Voldemort when they'd used the pensieve back in Potter Manor. This display did not do those memories any justice.

Reaching Cedric and Sarah, Sirius had to physically shove the boy aside so he could take his place. If his last memory of Sarah was her death, he wanted to memorise her face as she expired. Morbid, but he couldn't help it.

Ignoring the predictable, and slightly boring reaction, from Diggory, Sirius took Sarah gently into his arms so her legs were pointing outwards flat on the ground. Her hands, lifeless, were just lying on her stomach.

"Sarah? Sarah, what happened? What did he do to you?" Sirius's impassioned voice dropped to a horrified whisper, as he put his ear close to her mouth. She was barely breathing. He turned his head to Diggory, the useless boy was just...there, bum on the grass, but with no wand, and he was the Hogwarts champion?

"What did he do to her?" He asked Diggory, his voice harsh enough to cut through whatever it was he could see in the boys eyes.

Seeing this convict, someone who was supposed to be a Death Eater and a staunch supporter of He Who Must Not Be Named, cuddling Sarah's limp body to his own had Cedric questioning a great deal. His brain which had stopped, was now working when he caught sight of the harsh, almost deranged look on the former Azkaban convict's face.

"He drained her magic," Cedric replied when Black's furious voice matched his expression.

Sirius felt his anger drain as the explanation sank in. Voldemort...he'd drained Sarah's magic? The Black family had a long history of dark magic, but they drew the line to magic being drained from somebody's body. It was painful, and it left the body of the former witch or wizard completely weak and unable to move, but to fall into a coma and die. Though some of the Blacks favored this as a worthy means of exterminating muggleborns, others took a more realistic viewpoint that it would just leave the muggleborns immobile and not dead for a while.

Sirius looked down into Sarah's face. "So, that's why-" he couldn't finish the sentence. It made sense now, why Voldemort's spells seemed stronger than they had before. Sarah had told him once it was what you did with a gift that made you special, that she'd wanted to use her talents and intellect for good showed what kind of person she was.

That Voldemort would steal her magic, something that was her birthright that connected her to the history of the Potter family...Not even the Blacks would go that far. It was one of the ultimate evils.

"Oh no," Sirius closed his eyes as he wrapped his arms under Sarah's arms, hugging her to his chest and crying his eyes out, and he kissed the top of her head. "Sarah..."

He sobbed as a part of the prophecy came to his mind, the part where she would lose something. The fact she no longer had magic didn't matter to him anymore, he was more upset she was dying. She was losing her life.

That meant more to him than her magic.

"Wake up, Sarah Potter. Your own godfather is crying you are losing your life." Anger gripped Sirius's heart at the cruel taunting of Voldemort, but whereas in the past he would be lashing out, he couldn't. He didn't want Sarah to die alone. He locked eyes with Voldemort as the evil wizard sent a killing curse at a pack of Beauxbatons students. Sirius barely took any notice of them.

Voldemort laughed. "Listen well, all of you. The Girl you thought would triumph over me is dying, and with her death I, being a merciful lord, will make you my servants. Soon no-one will stand against me."

Sirius dropped his gaze from Voldemort as he cried over Sarah's body. He could feel her weak heartbeat, and her breathing sounded harsh and painful as her body tried desperately to keep her alive, though it was a losing battle.

How could fate do this? Hadn't the bitch taken away everything from Sarah? Her parents, her family, her chances of a normal life?

He thought, ignoring the Death Eaters and their Master killing everyone. He...didn't care about them. None of them. His world had contracted over the years from thoughts of his only living friend Remus, to his goddaughter. As the years had passed, the love he'd felt for Remus had died when the werewolf had just...left him to the dementors. Sarah had been the only thing that had kept him going. Being locked in a prison cell, he'd had no idea what her first word had been, what kind of life without her parents she'd had, but he'd lived in hope one day she'd find out about him, and if she thought him guilty of her parents deaths, he'd live with it by committing suicide.

He'd been over the moon when she'd let him into her life.

Now she was dying. The kind, gentle, mature, shy and generous young woman was now dying, caught up in a war she honestly didn't want to get caught up in. And there was nothing he could do about it.

Sirius sobbed harder, and his mind went to the last conversation he'd had with Sarah, about regeneration.

He'd hated the idea at first, but as he cradled Sarah so gently in his arms as the life drained from her body, he asked himself whether or not it would be a bad thing to change her appearance if she lived? Would it be a small price to pay if she could laugh, walk and talk freely without maniacs like Voldemort and deluded old fools like Dumbledore hunting her down?

And then, as though fate was listening to his thoughts and deciding to change her mind, a bright yellow light abruptly appeared above his head. Sirius looked up, and his eyes widened in surprise at the sight of the crack spewing yellow light down at them.

"For you, my past self," an unfamiliar voice said from within the crack.

Sirius frowned, not noticing some of the closer witches and wizards in the crowd trying to escape had stopped when the crack had appeared. A stream of...energy came from the crack, and it was heading straight for Sarah. Sirius watched as the energy went through his goddaughters open mouth.

Sarah suddenly came alive with a gasp. "Whaa?" she said before looking down at her hands, they were glowing brighter and brighter by the second. Sarah took a deep breath, lifting one of her hands in wonder.

"This is the end of you, Sarah Potter. Without your magic, you will soon die. I have at last killed you," Voldemort shouted as he fired more curses at the crowd and at Hogwarts.

"Really?" Sarah called, and with Sirius's help she managed to stand on her own two feet. "Then why am I still alive?"

Sarah knew she was bluffing. The nanites in her body were swarming, multiplying rapidly as they followed a clear instruction for the first regeneration of the new life cycle. The nanites had entered her brain, and they'd given her the knowledge that there was an extra load of their number for the first regeneration, and she knew why. Once interfaced with a body, the nanites used the ambient energy within and outside the body to power themselves to change the body into a new incarnation, but with the extra load Sarah could use them to kill Voldemort and his followers.

The nanites knew she was dying. They'd brought her body back to life for a brief amount of time, roughly 8 minutes. She could kill the Death Eaters and their master in that time, grab the portkey and take Sirius back to her TARDIS. Once there she could regenerate in peace.

Voldemort swung round. The look of surprise on his snakelike visage was completely different to the sadistic glee he'd shown only moments before, now he was shocked at the sight of Sarah Potter standing upright once more.

"Impossible," he hissed. "You should be dying."

Sarah opened her mouth, about to tell him honestly she was dying, but decided against it. Instead she winced as she stretched her left arm, watching the bare skin started to glow brightly.

"Never tell me what's impossible," she replied.

The Hogwarts clock started to chime, and one look at his watch told Sirius what the time was. Two am. And he couldn't help but swallow at that, thinking about how appropriate that was, that his goddaughter would die. The First Sarah would pass onto the Second Sarah at the chime of a clock.

He felt a sudden swoop of anger at fate for that.

Voldemort's attention was taken by the sudden glow on Potter's arm, and he watched as the other arm started to glow. "What magic is this?" He couldn't understand it, he'd drained the girls' magic from her body. She should be dead!

"This isn't magic," Sarah replied before she scoffed lightly. "You spent the first years of your life in a muggle orphanage, and you never imagined technology like this? You've forgotten so much. What's happening to me now is technology far ahead of your understanding!" She watched as Malfoy and Wormtail raised their wands. She wasn't going to have that. "Oh, and never curse a girl as she's regenerating!"

With that, she flung her arms outwards, the regeneration energy that had been building up within her body but bottled up found an outlet as she let down her control in her arms. Two streams of regeneration energy shot out of her arms, catching the two surprised Death Eaters who didn't move fast enough. The energy, aimed at their chests, boiled the blood and incinerated the internal organs.

Two smoking corpses dropped to the ground, but Sarah was still sending out regeneration energy, this time at Voldemort. The Dark Lord quickly raised a shield, and the energy impacted against it, making it crack and fizzle violently. After a moment, the shield looked like it was cracking like a pane of glass being crushed.

Sarah growled angrily as she felt her body get weaker. She should be regenerating right about now, instead she was using all the energy in her body to stop Voldemort. Unlike Malfoy and Peter, Voldemort was a tough cookie to stop. She closed her eyes and summoned more of the excess energy to break the shield.

Voldemort screamed as the shield suddenly shattered, and the weird energy hit him in his chest. He screamed loudly in pain and fury, and the energy suddenly gave away, leaving him panting on the ground.

Unlike Pettigrew and Malfoy, Voldemort's body was a magical construct, and though he didn't know it yet, all his horcruxes had been destroyed, leaving him mortal.

Sarah didn't let Voldemort have time to recover from the blast, she walked towards him, summoning more of the excess energy still in her body. The clock was ticking, and she could feel herself growing weaker by the moment. Her hands were glowing again by the time she reached the fallen Dark Lord, this time she didn't hesitate.

She bent down, and picked him up by wrapping her hands around his throat, and she knocked his wand out of his grasp deftly when she saw him raise it to curse her in the face. He tried touching her, but he winced when he touched her glowing face. Voldemort started crying out in pain as the regeneration nanites touched his skin, but he tried pushing her away with his magic. The nanites, seeing a new form of energy, far more powerful than the ambient atmospheric energy, fed from it like a mosquito sucking blood. They replicated, adding more and more potential for regeneration. In a fit of irony, they leeched off Voldemort's magic, and the extra magic he'd stolen from Sarah.

Sarah gasped as the magical energy and the regeneration energy touched. She could feel the excess regeneration energy spike, growing higher by the second. It was like a nuclear reactor joined to a simple diesel engine, doubling the energy output many times over. Power wise, they were both equal, but the regeneration nanites were not energy particles, they were machines that absorbed energy like a sponge dropped in water.

She didn't hesitate. The words of the dragon echoing in her mind. And then he will burst into flames...

The meaning was clear now.

Then she became aware of someone screaming.

Voldemort had tried desperately to get himself free. He'd tried struggling physically, but Sarah's grasp was too solid. Her skin burnt him hotter than anything he'd touched in his life. He'd tried pushing her with his magic, but he'd felt his magic drain, and Sarah just glowed brighter. He'd tried to stop the drain by stopping pushing his magic against her, but it was no use.

Sarah said clearly to him, "Love from the future."

Without giving the Dark Lord time to work out what she meant by that, Sarah threw her head back, finally letting loose with the regeneration, and a steam of the energy shot into the air whilst both hands poured their own energy into Voldemort's body at a range measured in millimeters.

Voldemort screamed as his body suddenly burst into flames, and he tried to will himself to calm down through the pain, that his soul anchors would save him...He didn't have time to react when he felt himself pass on without his horcruxes to save him. Lord Voldemort, Tom Marvolo Riddle, died in the blast of regeneration energy.

Sarah let go of the steaming body as she felt the last remnants of the excess regeneration energy give out, panting. She only needed to glance down at Voldemort's steaming body to remember the ticking clock that was the impending regeneration coming for her. She reached down into the smoking husk of the man who'd ruined the first years of her life, and retrieved her wand. Although it wouldn't work for her anymore, it was still hers, and she slid it into her belt before turning her back on the corpse, walking away from her past.

Sirius caught up with her just as she was close to the Triwizard cup. "Sarah," he gasped staring at her with unabashed awe. "You're okay. You didn't change."

Sarah smiled at her godfather's naivety. "It's started. I can't stop it, I've only got a few more minutes in this incarnation left. A whole new regeneration cycle...Just taking a while. I'm breaking it in. We've got to go." Sarah closed her eyes, gritting her teeth.

"Go? Go where?" Sirius asked in confusion. He couldn't believe it, he'd thought she'd used that regeneration stuff to heal herself, to let her live a bit longer in this body, but it was clear it wasn't going to happen.

Sarah sighed. She could feel a burning sensation in her body, and it was growing. She'd burnt off the excess nanites, now the real regeneration was setting in. They were standing here, wasting their time when she was on the verge of regenerating completely. "Back to the TARDIS. It's in a graveyard where Voldemort regained his body. Look, Sirius, I'm dying. I've got moments to live, and we're wasting time. Please. Just take the portkey with me, and I'll explain it."

Sirius swallowed when he saw the desperation on Sarah's face, and without a word he summoned the portkey, and took Sarah's hand in his. Sarah winced as she stepped closer to him, clutching her side with one arm. When he looked at her just as the portkey vortex took them away from Hogwarts, he saw two things. First, Dumbledore was rushing towards them, and secondly Sarah had raised the hand he wasn't holding. It was starting to glow.

* * *

Sarah had her eyes clamped firmly shut as the portkey once more took her like a fish with a hook and line flying through the air. She hated magical transport, despised it at the best of times, but this time made it worse. Time seemed to have no meaning on this journey back to the graveyard; she could feel the shadow of death over her. Melodramatic.

She was dying, her body was regenerating, and she could feel the nanites inside her, rebuilding her body on the inside. She could already feel her organs change, her musculature and her bones structure was starting to be rearranged on a cellular level. The worst of it was she was holding all the energy back with her strength of will, and the hardest part of all this was she was trying to hold in the regeneration as they travelled through the portkey vortex. The effects made her feel like she was on a ride in an amusement park. She was being thrown around so fast she couldn't concentrate, and she was sure some of the regeneration energy had been let out. The effects were becoming more serious, and with each unintentional release it just made the pain worse.

Finally, after an eternity, the portkey deposited Sirius and Sarah down heavily on the ground of the cemetery, the latter dropping to the ground panting as she fought to hold back what she knew was coming for her.

Meanwhile Sirius took a quick survey of the graveyard, shuddering at the sight of the massive cauldron and the feel of dark magic in the air.

"Sirius," Sarah's whisper carried on the wind.

Sirius was instantly by his goddaughter's side, and as he helped her up. He couldn't see her face as her hair drooped in-front of her face, but he could see her muscles tense and her hands start to glow with regeneration whatsits. He'd kept an eye on his sick goddaughter as they'd portkeyed to this place, ands he'd watched as some of the energy had left her body. Not a lot, but some.

Sirius helped Sarah stand up, the girl was moaning in pain. When she was upright once again, Sarah doubled over, gasping in pain.

"Sarah!" Sirius shouted. "What's wrong?"

Sarah shook her head, gritting her teeth against the sheer agony she was feeling. Sirius, seeing the expression on her face, instinctively tightened his grip around her. "TARDIS...over there," she hissed out, jabbing a finger in a direction. Sirius pulled Sarah to the TARDIS as quickly as he could, quickening his step when he felt her slowing down. Pretty soon he was dragging her towards the time machine.

"Hold on, Sarah," Sirius begged. "Just a bit more."

Regeneration frightened Sirius because, since it wasn't magic, he had no understanding of it. That and what he'd seen of regeneration so far when Sarah had used it to kill the Death Eaters and Voldemort, it frightened him, and it made him wonder just what would happen if Sarah didn't let it all go.

Shuddering at the image of Sarah exploding in a burst of energy, Sirius dragged her faster.

Suddenly Sarah pulled on Sirius's arm, and dragged him towards a statue. "Camouflaged," she said in a guttural voice, and she opened the door to the time machine.

Sirius watched his goddaughter stagger up to the console to set the controls, and the TARDIS left the graveyard. By now Sarah was in unbelievable agony. Sweat was dripping from her brow as she staggered, panting towards the controls, and her muscles were tensed so badly Sirius feared they would snap like stretched elastic.

"Why is this happening?" He had to ask.

Sarah panted as she walked around the console one last time in this incarnation. "What do you mean?" she got out, but the pain in her body as it was being rearranged almost made her pass out. She managed to put the pain away with sheer willpower, but it was no good. It would not go away.

"I thought with all that energy stuff leaving you after killing Voldemort and his two Death Eaters, you'd survive," Sirius replied, looking desperate to help his goddaughter. Sarah craned her head to stare at Sirius. She looked, in her godfather's eyes, to be calm and accepting of her impending death. Sarah saw the fear highlighted on Sirius's face. "There was an extra load of the energy," she whispered hoarsely. "That was what you saw, Sirius. The rest of the nanites bonded themselves to me, but they would've activated anyway. Voldemort had already killed me when he stole my magic. My body was already dead." Sarah suddenly bent double, gazing at her now glowing hands.

"No, don't do this," Sirius came over to her.

"Stay back," Sarah gasped out, the glow spreading to her face. The burning feeling in her chest was now overwhelming, and she gave into the urge to get it over and done with. She closed her eyes in concentration, and she threw her head back, letting go of all the barriers she'd held up since the regeneration had begun. She let it all out, and-

Sirius stepped back when Sarah suddenly threw her head back, her face and body glowing brighter, and then it was over. When her head dropped back, there was a totally different woman in her place. She was wearing Sarah's clothes, her dress and still had the hair ribbon in her hair, but they didn't suit her let alone fit her.

She was fairly tall, taller than before, close to Sirius in height. Tall, slim with long dark brown hair, only a touch lighter than Sarah's had been. She had a longish face, with high cheekbones, and big brown eyes rather than sparkling emerald. She looked older than the teenage girl Sirius remembered, somewhere in her 30s.

The woman panted, and she looked around before focusing on Sirius. Narrowing her eyes, she slowly moved towards him, not blinking, just coming towards the only other person in the time machine.

Sirius was staring wide eyed at her, stunned by the force of the regeneration and the actual transformation.

When they were close enough, the woman Sirius knew was Sarah, looked deeply into his eyes. She opened her mouth to say something when she staggered back. "Oooh, stomach. I've got a new stomach, well its the same stomach. Just been reorganised, is all."

Sirius gasped when he heard her speak. She had a Manchester accent.

"Sarah?" he whispered.

The woman blinked. "Is that my name?" Sirius gasped, a shard of pain hitting him hard in the chest. If she didn't remember her own name, and what had happened to her, what else didn't she remember?

"Hold on," She rubbed her forehead. "Wait. That's my name isn't it?" She grinned suddenly as the memories returned to her. "And you, you're Steven aren't you? My godfather. No, wait, that's wrong, you're name isn't Steven. Though it begins with an S. Hold on, give me a minute and I'll remember it." She concentrated hard. Sirius stayed still. Sarah, the old Sarah, the proper Sarah had always worked best at thinking when everything was silent. But this wasn't the old Sarah, and he'd have to remember that. This was a brand new Sarah.

She looked up at him slowly, a grin brightening her face up. "Sirius, your name is Sirius."

Sirius smiled back with relief. "Yeah. How much do you remember?"

Sarah's grin dimmed. "Everything." Jumping away from Sirius all of a sudden, Sarah headed for the controls. "I set the controls to random, but we're moving into the future. Wanna hang around?" She asked Sirius.

Sirius smiled back. "Definitely." He walked over to where Sarah was standing, watching this stranger wearing the old Sarah's ill fitting clothes, as she worked the console. Her hands, unfamiliar with such work, moved with the same proficiency as her last self's hands.

"Where do you think we're going?" Sirius asked.

Sarah turned her new brown eyes to Sirius, and the old marauder realised the new gaze would take some getting used to. But Sarah's delight matched that of her original incarnation, and that warmed Sirius's heart.

"Who knows?" Sarah replied philosophically.

**A/N I picture the Second Sarah as Suranne Jones.**


	5. Chapter 5

**The Time Traveller. **

**A New Life. **

Sirius watched as the new Sarah worked around the console, her movements becoming more practiced as she went on her rounds, a frown of concentration on her face. He blinked a few times as he just...stared at the woman. It was hard to look at her and not think she was somebody else, and she still wore the clothes that Sarah, the OLD Sarah had worn, complete with her neat little shoes and trademark hair ribbon. She looked like a grown woman wearing too large clothes. The worst of it was he knew it was Sarah, but she wasn't his Sarah; she wasn't short, she wasn't a teenage girl anymore physically, she appeared more mature and older but Sirius guessed she wasn't. Oh, his head was starting to hurt. If Sirius had been a bit more observant, he would have noticed the new Sarah was a bit preoccupied herself. Sarah was in two minds; it was like she had multiple personality disorder, on one hand she had her original incarnations' personality to contend with, and her new personality which was growing more dominant. It was hard to acquaint the two personalities in her mind; her first self, so quiet, serious, demure and intelligent, but underneath all that was a mind as strong as steel, and her new personality by contrast was so new and unfamiliar Sarah had no idea how to describe it. Sarah glanced at Sirius, and she found it hard to accept she was now as tall as he was, her attention focused on his expression. She could recognise it for what it was. Sirius was having trouble accepting her, and that was the last thing Sarah needed. She needed his support, his strength to get her through her first regeneration. She felt too fragile at the moment, but if Sirius was going to be selfish he may as well leave, and she didn't want that.

The TARDIS started to land in a new time and place, and Sarah did a quick environmental check to see where and when they were, and satisfied with the results Sarah left the control room. She had to get out of there, and in her present mood she didn't truly care if Sirius followed on or not. Sarah sighed almost in relief when she heard Sirius's footsteps following her out of the room. So he'd come out of his funk, had he? Sirius followed the tall young woman into a massive wardrobe room.

"What're you doing?" he asked. "Looking for paper towels, what do you think?" Sarah shot back before clapping a hand to her mouth. Sarcastic, geez. I'm sarcastic now, she thought to herself. "I'm looking for new clothes."

"Oh," Sirius said, thinking he'd been a bit stupid asking a question like that. It took Sarah less than an hour to choose a proper outfit; her last self had favored dresses as a means to make people underestimate her, but she had liked her outfits then. When the Second Sarah walked into the wardrobe, she'd headed straight over to the dress racks in the wardrobe out of habit...only to find they weren't to her fancy, that worried her because she'd always been, well picky about her outfits. Now she was gravitating towards the racks holding jackets, shirts and trousers. Sarah selected a pair of dark brown trousers, black Doc Martens, a dark red blouse and a brown jacket. When she put her clothes on, she felt regret taking out the hair ribbon, it felt weird really seeing it there. She looked like a little kid. But removing it...the second Sarah removed the final remnants of the first Sarah.

* * *

The moment Sirius saw his new outfit, he almost hit the roof but controlled himself when he saw Sarah's bare forehead. If she hadn't looked like a stranger before, she did now without that hair ribbon. Sarah was either uncaring about Sirius's reaction, or she was just ignoring it for her own sake. Her new outfit felt warmer and more practical than her old one, and she'd finally gotten rid of the things that defined her as a kid, she felt a hundred dollars better. Silently she headed for the door control, and she stepped out of the TARDIS. Sirius watched her go...just standing there, quiet and unsure. When she stepped outside, Sarah grinned, then she grimaced when she realised she was standing outside alone. "Hey, come on out Sirius, you'll love this." She called back inside the TARDIS, hoping against hope Sirius would follow.

He did.

The moment the wizard looked out of the view outside the time machine, he instantly gasped. Sarah couldn't blame him. Not many wizards could say they'd travelled 65 million light years away from Earth before. Sirius's eyes were bulging, not a good look for the man, at the sight of the beautiful turquoise colored sky, with the silver lined clouds, and the green trees with the sapphire colored berries, and crimson flowers. The air smelt divine. Sarah stepped closer to him. "Wizards. You spend all your time pottering around on Earth, so decadent, so...stagnant. This is a planet 65 million light years from Earth; if you used a rocket to travel only a few light years, you'd be out of fuel since it would take centuries just to reach the nearest star."

Sirius heard her perfectly. "Is that why we haven't seen other worlds?"

Being a pureblooded wizard, particularly one born into a bigoted family who believed the wizarding world was the pinnacle of development. The Blacks like many other families with the same mindset had looked down their noses at muggleborns and muggles in general, but Sirius who'd gone into Gryffindor had met muggleborns, and started making friends out of them. He'd had to do so carefully of course; his family hated him enough for going into the house of the brave, for him to mix with muggleborns...it was lucky he hadn't been disowned. When Sirius had been younger, yeah, he'd more or less believed the pureblood propaganda, but when he'd seen for himself what muggleborns could do, and when Lily took him, Remus and James into the muggle world when she and James had been courting, he had seen for himself what muggles had done. His parents had painted them as primitive barbarians, but when he saw how they led their lives, the thing they had done...He knew they weren't after seeing their inventions - machines that ran without magic, trains underground, images on a screen...how could they be primitive if they did that?

And their technology still grew more advanced each day.

"More or less," Sarah replied to his question, glancing up at the sky with a smile gracing her new features.

Sirius still hadn't blinked, "When are we?"

"We just moved through space, I wanted to avoid time travel whilst my new form settles." Sarah said, smiling at Sirius. She was amused by his reaction.

Sirius nodded, barely hearing his goddaughter's reply. "When will muggles, I mean humans arrive here?"

It was hard to wrap his heads around the fact that here, on this strange new world, all the things on Earth he valued, all the pureblood crap his parents and family had forcefed him and his brother, and his cousins, all the political shit and corruption that had drowned magical Britain for centuries...It was meaningless here, on this planet. Oh, there had been places on Earth where the air felt less...oppressive, that was one reason he'd left for the tropics, the Bahama's, Tahiti, Hawaii, and other places in the Pacific ocean. The air had been a balm to his soul; in a warm place so unlike the perpetual cold, damp, stink pit of Azkaban, listening to the other inmates screams and cries, feeling the harsh icy cold of the dementors, Sirius had been in paradise. But the shadow of what his goddaughter had been going through back home, it reminded Sirius there was a shadow. Magical Britain, he'd learnt from his disguised forays into magical enclaves in New Zealand, Hawaii, and Australia, was a joke; Sirius had always been told, from biased sources, other countries were inferior to Magical Britain, but he'd always taken those offhand comments with a pinch of salt, seeing them for ignorant comments so he wasn't surprised when he actually visited them. But this planet was not Earth. Here there were no Dark Lords or Dark Lord wannabe's, no insane followers bowing at their feet at their propaganda, just a beautiful planet with an innocence Sirius had never seen anywhere else.

"65 million light years," Sarah bit her lip in thought; Sirius had to look away since the mannerism reminded him so much of the old Sarah who'd done the same thing whenever she was thinking, "humans develop warp technology first, in another century in fact...800 years from now, then they'll develop a more powerful technology to cross distances even faster."

"Why 800 years?"

Sarah chuckled. "Humans are slow," she replied softly. "Right now, back home there are physicists, scientists," she clarified when she saw Sirius's quizzical look, "who are trying to find a way to break the light barrier, and travel to worlds like this."

Sirius didn't know what the light barrier was, and so he didn't bother asking about it. Sarah noticed his expression, and shook her head.

* * *

"You've been here before, haven't you?"

Sirius and Sarah were sitting on a picnic blanket next to a cooler holding sandwiches, fresh fruit, and cold drinks. Well, Sirius was sitting, more like leaning on the blanket as he stared down at the young woman who was lying on her back with her eyes closed in the sun, her skin gleaming with applied suntan lotion from the bottle off to the side.

"A few times," Sarah admitted without opening her eyes. "The first time I came here...I'd just finished the TARDIS, and hitched a ride into the future. In 900 years from now, humans will have the technology to leapfrog through space as easily as people in our time can travel by train. I got a ticket here, visited the colony, went back to Earth to pick the TARDIS up, came back though I went backwards into the past before humans colonise this world."

Sirius nodded, though he didn't take his eyes off his newly regenerated goddaughter. "What made you come here now after your regeneration?"

Sarah looked up at him, "What's this, twenty questions? I didn't decide to come here, remember? The TARDIS brought us here on random, probably thought I could do with the familiar surroundings to recover."

If Sirius was surprised by the sharpness of Sarah's response, he had no idea how Sarah was taking it in. God, she was thinking to herself. I've become sharper in this new incarnation. Guess it makes sense, she thought to herself, my last self was quiet to the point of invisibility, so I guess the opposites are understandable. Sarah looked away from Sirius, and she reached inside the cooler to get a drink, but most importantly to keep herself distracted from Sirius.

* * *

The awkwardness between godfather and goddaughter didn't go away, much to Sirius's consternation. But Sarah didn't mind; regenerated or not, her basic personality had remained the same, so her inner desire for peace hadn't gone away.

Pity Sirius didn't have such restraint. "Sarah, look," he fidgeted with his hands as they walked through the forest. "I'm sorry, its just-" he stopped when Sarah turned to face him properly. She didn't say anything, but she pinned him down with her brown eyes. Her new brown eyes. Sirius tried hard to see those eyes, but it made no difference. All he could see was the short girl who resembled Lily Potter, minus the hair color. He did try to see the new woman, tried to see the new Sarah...But he couldn't, and if the clenched jaw he was getting from Sarah was any indication, she knew what he was thinking.

Oh hell.

"Sirius, I'm trying, I really am," Sarah said, her eyes pleading with him to understand, "Please..."

Sirius looked away, Sarah sighed. "Yer think I wanted this?" She barely noticed the way she said 'you' as she laid into Sirius, her Manchester accent getting worse as she got more worked up. "Yer think I wanted to die, regenerate and come back?"

Sarah turned her smoldering gaze forwards, her eyes glinting furiously. She was surprised by how...aggressive her new persona seemed to be. Her last self had been just as sharp, and when you had Lily and James Potter for parents, you were bound to inherit their tempers, which Sarah had. The first Sarah had been renowned for being kind, quiet and mature, but when you'd pissed her off you did so at your own peril. Dumbledore and quite a few other students at Hogwarts had quickly learnt, well at first if you consider the collective stupidity of the magical people and Dumbledore's persistence, that Sarah Potter really did not want to be bothered. But this new incarnation...Sarah could feel new thoughts and feelings her previous self had never had before settling into her mind, she wanted to be more vivacious, outgoing and so on. Her first self had gone out with friends, gotten drunk and so on, and after she'd left Hogwarts she'd lost her virginity, though this new body...she seemed to want to do more, push the boundaries a bit, but she wasn't going to tell Sirius about that. She was sure he would be protective if she was still the first Sarah, but she wasn't sure how he would react to her new incarnation.

Sirius gaped at her, more surprised by the pain in her voice rather than the anger. Part of him was surprised by Sarah's anger, yes, but he was more surprised by her admission she wished she hadn't regenerated. "Surely you don't mean," Sirius stumbled over the words, "you don't mean you didn't want to regenerate?"

Sarah bit her lip again, Sirius shuddered involuntarily at the mannerism. "I'm not ungrateful I'm still alive, though I dunno how," she added, glancing at him for a moment before looking away again. "I'm grateful for a second chance at life, but I wish it hadn't been necessary to lose a life."

Even as she said that, Sarah wasn't sure; the magical world had been obsessed with her, Sarah had worked that out the moment Hagrid had led her into the Leaky Cauldron, and though her memory was a bit hazy around certain bits, Sarah could remember the way the patrons had greeted her. She remembered her surprise, how overwhelmed she'd been - it was hard being an unknown orphan in the muggle world, lost amongst the masses. Just another face. In the magical world it was the other way around, everyone had known her though she had never known whose hands she'd been shaking, though she'd quickly stopped. Hagrid, the stupid oaf, had acted like it was an everyday occurrence much to her annoyance, it also annoyed her he had neglected to warn her about the masses. Sarah hated attention. She hated being the centre of everyone's view, she preferred being in the shadows. At the orphanage and at Primary school, Sarah had learnt a lot about the different people who attended, students, caretakers, caterers, and teachers, all that just by keeping her head down, staying outside the eye of everyone. She had made a system to define the people, and she'd made detailed mental files on each person; what they did, if they were bullies or not, and if they could be trusted. She'd taken the definition system to Hogwarts. The results had been far from wonderful or encouraging; some of the teachers had known their stuff, no doubt about that, and some of the students - Hermione Granger - had lapped it up like babies suckling their mothers milk, but the teachers had been ignorant of the rampant prejudice going on; Sarah had lost count on the number of times the word mudblood was used and teachers didn't do a thing. Personally Sarah thought Dumbledore, going by what Aberforth had told her when she'd visited the Leaky cauldron, had something to do with it all. Why she didn't know. Now she couldn't bring herself to care - she had no magic anymore, she was down one regeneration, and that was it. The students were no better than the adults, they were prejudiced, bigoted, and ignorant of the world outside their borders. To be honest Sarah didn't really care if the wizarding world made the mistake of attacking the muggle world; the conflict would be vicious, the muggles would probably be overwhelmed by the revelation magic was real, that there were communities who used it, but they would fight back.

Sarah had always guessed the interest Dumbledore had had in her, and probably still did, was because she would be the destroyer of Voldemort, she would be used by the old fool to be moulded into becoming the Leader of the Light. That reason alone made Sarah pleased she had regenerated; she'd hated being the Girl who Lived. Hated the way people had treated her, persecuted her, tried to gain control of her which had resulted in her emancipation. Back in her last life Sarah had looked hard at herself in the mirror, and she was certain she could see invisible scars from all the fighting. Now she had a new appearance, she was hopeful the magical world wouldn't recognise her if she walked through Hogsmeade, not that she ever would.

Sirius looked down at his hands. "I'm sorry," he said; Sarah looked at him strangely, wondering why he was apologising. A moment later she got her answer. "I've been strung up, thinking about how I would handle all this," he used a hand to gesture at Sarah's new face and body, "but I never thought-"

"Exactly," Sarah couldn't help but interrupt bitterly, making Sirius wince when he realised where she was going with this. She was going to remind him of his mistakes after Voldemort murdered Lily and James. He'd gotten a lot of abuse from Sarah, the First Sarah, he corrected himself, and he'd thought he was over it with her.

But this was a different Sarah, and she seemed to be more aggressive than her previous life.

"Sarah, I thought we were over that," he tried.

"We are," she surprised him, "but its a good idea to remind you of your own stupidity."

Sarah looked away, "Come on, its time to go." She turned around and stalked off.

"Go, why?" Sirius couldn't understand why Sarah suddenly wanted to leave.

Sarah sighed as she stopped. "Because this place has lost its appeal," she replied without turning back. With that she stalked off, walking faster back towards the TARDIS. Shocked, Sirius started following after her.

"Sarah, wait," he called, but the tall figure didn't slow down as she reached the site of the picnic. Sirius ran towards her as she tidied the place up, he hesitantly reached down and touched her shoulders carefully because he had no idea how she would react to him touching her. "I'm sorry for being selfish, sorry for going after Pettigrew..."

"That's not it."

The reply was so quiet Sirius almost didn't hear it. He bent down closer to her.

Sarah's eyes locked onto his. "That's not it," she repeated more loudly, seeing Sirius's puzzlement. "I'm upset because of all the people I know, you're the only one to truly care about me. Oh, the staff and kids at the orphanage were nice to me, god knows they were a better family in name rather than blood, than the fucking Dursleys Dumbledore kept trying to force me to live with, better than even Remus I can't get a life 'cause I'm a werewolf, therefore I'm destined to feel sorry for myself Lupin," her voice caught at that, the pain that the only other member of the marauders to still be dependable wasn't. The hatred she felt for the Dursleys had turned to stone.

"But now I've...changed, you seem to be keeping me at arms length. I understand, I'm technically a different person. But I have the same feelings, the same memories though in a different package. And you're pushing me away. I didn't just come here to recover, I came here to let you get to know me again," Sarah cursed mentally as she felt the sob catch in her throat. She'd been incredibly sensitive before Hogwarts, and sometimes she had cried herself to sleep whilst at Hogwarts, but she hadn't thought this new incarnation would inherit it. Some kids were embarrassed or disdainful of children their age who cried their eyes out, but not Sarah. To her, being able to cry made you more human that bottling it up. Sirius heard the sob too, it surprised him since this new woman seemed stronger than the last Sarah. That thought made him wince; the last Sarah, despite being quiet and sometimes withdrawn had been very strong, right up till the end. That thought made him shudder, the memory of holding Sarah's exhausted body, the crack, the regeneration energy, Voldemort with Wormtail and Malfoy firing curses at the panicking crowds of people watching the absurd Third task of the tournament, people Dumbledore should've been protecting.

The memory of how Sarah had recovered, and started to regenerate made him breathless with sadness, so he was surprised when he felt Sarah's hand on his wrist.

"Shall we make another go of it?" she asked. "Today, just us."

Sirius grinned and nodded.

* * *

The rest of the day passed nicely for Sirius and Sarah now the awkwardness was out of the way. Sarah laughed, well almost laughed at the insane jokes Sirius told her, but she didn't laugh when he recounted stories of the exploits of the marauders. Sirius had quickly stopped, remembering the last time he'd done that and Sarah's reactions. It seemed this Sarah didn't like hearing stories where her father was an arrogant egotist. Looking back himself, Sirius could see her point. Sirius also had a laugh; this new Sarah was a woman after his own heart, she was snarky, sarcastic and blunt. When they left, Sirius was hopeful he would have a closer relationship with Sarah.

When they were inside the TARDIS, Sarah sat Sirius down. She had a question on her mind, an obvious question. "How did I suddenly regenerate?" she asked.

Sirius started at the question, surprised she would ask a question she should know all by herself. She'd been there, right? Then he realised she'd been unconscious at the time when the crack had appeared. So he told her, speaking in quiet voice for a half an hour before asking where he could get some sleep.

* * *

Lying in her bed, Sarah thought about everything Sirius had told her. She'd already known most of it, but when Voldemort had ripped her magic out of her body she'd been close to death anyway. If dying had been a tunnel, Sarah would've been a quarter of the way down. Sirius had assumed she'd known about what'd been happening to her, but she hadn't. Oh, she'd distantly heard the sounds of screaming but they'd sounded so far away, and then she was suddenly awake, her hands glowing with the nanobots. Sirius's description of the crack, the voice saying "my past self" was telling.

The only explanation she could see was it was a future incarnation, not her present one but one a long or short way into her future. Sarah wasn't sure what to feel or to think, one of her future lives would come up with the answer to making regeneration a reality, and would send it back in time to save her first incarnation from death. Sarah was torn between gratitude and slight fear because of the paradox, but one thing was sure.

She had all the time in the world to find out how it all happened, but she didn't know when her next regeneration would come. She didn't plan on regenerating for a long time, but she couldn't be sure of anything.


End file.
